Uncoupled seamus heaney biography

by Seamus Heaney

reviewed by Heather Clark

In “Exposure,” the last poem of Seamus Heaney’s pivotal collection North, the poet positions himself as an Ovidian exile, “weighing and weighing / My responsible tristia” while he ruminates on his decision to leave Belfast for the Republic of Ireland. Safely ensconced in Wicklow—“Escaped from the massacre”—the dejected poet concedes that his own hesitant involvement with the fractious politics of Northern Ireland has thrown him off course and caused him to miss, in the poem’s famous last image, “The comet’s pulsing rose.”

That spectral comet reappears in the last poem of Human Chain, “A Kite for Aibhín.” Now, however, the poet is in full possession of its elusive, enabling energy:

I take my stand again, halt opposite
Anahorish Hill to scan the blue,
Back in that field to launch our long-tailed comet.

. . . and my hand is like a spindle
Unspooling, the kite a thin-stemmed flower
Climbing and carrying, carrying farther, higher

The longing in the breast and planted feet
And gazing face and heart of the ki

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Seamus Heaney's Poetry

● Seamus Heaney's Poetry ● About Seamus Heaney​, His full name was ​Seamus Justin Heaney. He was an Irish poet, critic, playwright, translator, and lecturer. He was born in Northern Ireland in 1939 and died in Dublin, Ireland in 2013. He was arguably the best Irish poet since ​W. B. Yeats​. (enotes.com). He received his education first in ​St. Columb's College​, then he completed his study in English language and literature at ​Queen's University Belfast. After that he became a lecturer at ​St. Joseph's ​and then at ​Queen's University Belfast​. During these times he got acquainted with lots of educated people especially poets such as ​Derek Mahon and Michael Longley ​among others. ​University ​of California ​and ​Harvard University ​were other universities that he lectured in. He married ​Marie Devlin, ​a schoolteacher whom they were together since August 1965 until his death. (wikipedia). He published twenty volumes of poetry, amongst them ​Death of a Naturalist(1966), Field Work(1979), The Spirit Level(1996), district and Circle(

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Human Chain

‘… posterity is a vaudeville joke audible only to those with front-row seats…’

2666, Roberto Bolano

 

Human Chain is book of ghosts and goodbyes, a late masterpiece full of poignant farewells to family and friends among both the living and the dead. Populated by vibrant monuments to the most meaningful people and places of his existence, it is Heaney’s sepulchral version of paradise, what the resurrection might look like for him. It is also a book that is aware of a certain redundancy, a certain futility in its efforts to contact and conjure the dead, and to preserve their memory in the form of a putatively immutable and ever-living art: 

The door was open and the house was dark

wherefore I called his name, although I knew

the answer this time would be silence

—‘The door was open and the house was dark’

Heaney’s early home life features more prominently here than at any time since his early collections. One has the impression of attending an extended séance, and of the ectoplasmic effort of making the vanished appear again before us. It is