- Title Pages
- Title Pages
- Title Pages
- Acknowledgments
- Against Aesthetics
- The Unbearable Rightness of Criticism
- Verse Chronicle
- Verse Chronicle
- The Sovereign Ghost of Wallace Stevens
- Eliot in Ink
- Larkin’s Toads
- Verse Chronicle
- Verse Chronicle
- Frost’s Notebooks
- Heaney’s Chain
- Heaney’s Ghosts
- Verse Chronicle
- Verse Chronicle
- World War II Poetry, Reloaded
- Frank O’Hara’s Shopping Bag
- The Village of Louise Glück
- Verse Chronicle
- Verse Chronicle
- Nobody’s Perfect
- Elizabeth Bishop at the New Yorker
- Elizabeth Bishop at Summer Camp
- A Critic’s Notebook
- A List of Don’ts
- Permissions
- Books Under Review
- Index of Authors Reviewed
Heaney’s Ghosts
Heaney’s Ghosts
- Chapter:
- (p.135) Heaney’s Ghosts
- Source:
- Guilty Knowledge, Guilty Pleasure
- Author(s):
William Logan
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
This chapter reviews Dennis O'Driscoll's Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney. The interviews, which took place mostly on pen and paper, over the course of six years, provide a tour of Heaney's childhood and poetic career. Heaney has been called the finest Irish poet since Yeats—with the not-so-sly implication that he's not as good as Yeats. The book underscores how much a poet like Heaney is used by his past to make its claim, but perhaps no book can explain the indelible mystery of his work. The secret can't be found in interviews, because they are the wrong place to look. In the end, this interminable inquisition does what it should—it sends you back to the poetry, the poetry of a man who has lived in the rectitude of language and the doubts of the tongue.
Keywords: Seamus Heaney, poets, poetry, interviews, Dennis O'Driscoll, review
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- Title Pages
- Title Pages
- Title Pages
- Acknowledgments
- Against Aesthetics
- The Unbearable Rightness of Criticism
- Verse Chronicle
- Verse Chronicle
- The Sovereign Ghost of Wallace Stevens
- Eliot in Ink
- Larkin’s Toads
- Verse Chronicle
- Verse Chronicle
- Frost’s Notebooks
- Heaney’s Chain
- Heaney’s Ghosts
- Verse Chronicle
- Verse Chronicle
- World War II Poetry, Reloaded
- Frank O’Hara’s Shopping Bag
- The Village of Louise Glück
- Verse Chronicle
- Verse Chronicle
- Nobody’s Perfect
- Elizabeth Bishop at the New Yorker
- Elizabeth Bishop at Summer Camp
- A Critic’s Notebook
- A List of Don’ts
- Permissions
- Books Under Review
- Index of Authors Reviewed