The Redress of Poetry [Paperback]

Seamus Heaney defines the title of this work of criticism as follows: To redress poetry is to know and celebrate it for its forcibleness as itself . . . not only as a matter of profferd argument and edifying content but as a matter of angelic potential, a motion of the soul. Throughout this collection, Heaney's insight and eloquence are themselves of a poetic order.

Nobel laureate Heaney is a pastoralist with a strong and critical sense of history. His rich and earthy poems are about the life of the land of northern Ireland as well as the evolution of the heavily mythologized Irish identity. Heaney's sonorous lyricism stems from his love of the cycles of country life, the mystery of the sea, the satisfying rhythm of hard, physical work. But Heaney loves poetry and poetics as well as nature and expresses this passion in his forceful if demanding literary essays. This is his third book of criticism, and it contains 10 lectures Heaney delivered as professor of poetry at Oxford. In the title essay, Heaney explains how poetry balances the 'scales of reality towards some transcendent equilibrium.' After considering all the burdens contemporary poets carry, from the long tradition of the form itself to pressing political perspectives, Heaney still insists that 'poetry cannot afford to lose its fundamentally self-delighting inventiveness.' This viewpoint underlies his shrewd essays on George Herbert, Christopher Marlowe, the Irish poet Brian Merriman, Dylan Thomas, Philip Larkin, and Elizabeth Bishop. Booklist

Seamus Heaneywas born in 1939 in Northern Ireland. His award-winning books of poetry includeThe Haw Lantern,Seeing Things, andThe Spirit Level. A resident of Dublin, he has taught at Oxford and Harvard.