The Spirit Level - Softcover

Heaney, Seamus

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571178227 ISBN 13: 9780571178223

Publisher: Gardners Books, 1996

Synopsis

A collection of poems from the winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize for Literature. The poems discover the possibility of a new beginning in many subjects and circumstances. Private memories, classical scenes and humble domestic objects are endowed with talismanic significance and friends and relatives are invoked for their promise and steadfastness.

About this title

Review:

The title of Seamus Heaney's first collection of poetry since winning the Nobel Prize in 1995 is the term used in Ireland for a carpenter's level, an earthy physical allusion to matters of spirit that is quintessential Heaney. And indeed this volume deals masterfully with the finding of a level balancing point in ethical, moral, and spiritual affairs. Heaney has famously likened his craft to the farming activities of his childhood, comparing his pen to his father's spade; here he extends that analogy, comparing the lines of a poem to furrows being plowed in the earth, and "the poem as ploughshare that turns time/ Up and over." Heaney's furrows are straight and clean, his loamy lines abundantly fertile.

About the Author:

Seamus Heaney was born in County Derry in Northern Ireland. Death of a Naturalist, his first collection of poems, appeared in 1966, and was followed by poetry, criticism and translations which established him as the leading poet of his generation. In 1995 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, and twice won the Whitbread Book of the Year, for The Spirit Level (1996) and Beowulf (1999). Stepping Stones, a book of interviews conducted by Dennis O'Driscoll, appeared in 2008; Human Chain, his last volume of poems, was awarded the 2010 Forward Prize for Best Collection. He died in 2013. His translation of Virgil's Aeneid Book VI was published posthumously in 2016 to critical acclaim.

About this edition

• Publisher: Gardners Books
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0571178227
• ISBN 13: 9780571178223
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 70