Obit: Poet Seamus Heaney (1939-2013)

Subject: Obit: Seamus Heaney
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 30 Aug 13 - 06:41 AM

RTE news just announced the death of poet Seamus Heaney.

Irish Times article

Subject: RE: Obit: Seamus Heaney
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 30 Aug 13 - 07:41 AM

So sad. I only knew his poetry after I had to teach it. He was an undoubted genius. Very English in the way Yeats was - a lot of cleverness and cerebration - and complex metaphors. I loved his stuff. He was a truth teller. A teller of complex truths. I am surprised politicians liked him.

Subject: RE: Obit: Seamus Heaney
From: GUEST,bigJ
Date: 30 Aug 13 - 07:47 AM

Sorry to learn of his death.
He was due to appear at the Derry Fleadh a fortnight ago with Liam O'Flynn, did he make it?

Subject: RE: Obit: Seamus Heaney
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 30 Aug 13 - 09:03 AM

I'd hoped he'd be here for a good few years, and like Yeats produce another generation of work to make all the younger poets feel a bit out of touch. A few months younger than me. Much too soon to lose him.

Subject: RE: Obit: Seamus Heaney (1939 - 2013)
From: Rapparee
Date: 30 Aug 13 - 09:59 AM

Ah, no!!

Subject: Obit: Seamus Heaney (1939 - 2013)
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 30 Aug 13 - 12:33 PM

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/seamus-heaney-obituary-nobel-prizewinning-irish-poet-8791807.html

I don't know if this is of interest to many Mudcatters, but poetry and music go hand in hand, so he may have admirers here.

His fourth collection, North (1975), was a stepping stone on the way to his ultimate status as the "greatest living poet" – the most widely read poet in English, possessor of incomparable gifts and impeccable instincts, and all the other superlatives heaped on him.

North was held by some to denote an artistic breakthrough, embodying as it did a new strength and sophistication following on from the pared-down, rural, evocations and intensities of the earlier collections. In Heaney's native Northern Ireland, though, its reception was less than adulatory. There were complicated reasons for this: for example, the "famous Seamus" brouhaha, which was starting up around this time, made a contrary assessment inevitable in the poet's home territory. More seriously, with the Troubles entering a horrific phase, it was felt that certain poems in the collection could be read as an endorsement of Republicanism, with Heaney displaying, at best, as one critic wrote, "a culpable ambiguity in [his] responses to atrocity". Such reservations were, I think, based on a misreading; Heaney was never an apologist for violence, despite the seeming drift of the much-quoted lines about "conniving" in civilised outrage, while understanding "the exact / and tribal, intimate revenge". His brief was large enough to accord a right of expression to every variety of belief. And if "the dark matter of the news headlines" got into Heaney's poetry, as it did at intervals from this time on - though always contained within an oblique and subtle, multi-layered and illuminating, modus operandi – the light he was aiming for, he said, "was the kind that derives from clarity of expression, from plain speaking."

SRS

Subject: RE: Obit: Poet Seamus Heaney (1939 - 2013)
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 30 Aug 13 - 03:27 PM

poetry and music go hand in hand

I suppose in Heaney's case there would be many examples where his poetry and traditional music touched.
His cooperations with Liam O Flynn under the Piper and the Poet banner would be just one example. Poems like The Given Note centering around the story of the great Blasket tune Port na bPucai is just one other example.

'he may have admirers here.'

Is probably a monumental understatement when speaking of a man who was not only a Nobel laureate but by many thought of as the greatest living poet. FWIW, even my son, earlier today, could readily come out with parts of 'The Mid-Term Break', 'Clearances', 'Digging' and others and quote lines from them.

Subject: RE: Obit: Poet Seamus Heaney (1939 - 2013)
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 30 Aug 13 - 04:48 PM

An Bonnan Bui - The Yellow Bittern

Subject: RE: Obit: Poet Seamus Heaney (1939 - 2013)
From: gnu
Date: 30 Aug 13 - 05:50 PM

Why is this thread now below the line?

Subject: RE: Obit: Poet Seamus Heaney (1939 - 2013)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 30 Aug 13 - 09:41 PM

I wondered that, too. Poetry has generally been above the line.

Is Seamus related to Joe Heaney?

-Joe-

Subject: RE: Obit: Poet Seamus Heaney (1939 - 2013)
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 31 Aug 13 - 04:59 AM

Some mod kicked it down the line within the hour. Ignorance.

No relationship between the Derry and Carna Heaneys.

Subject: RE: Obit: Poet Seamus Heaney (1939 - 2013)
From: MartinRyan
Date: 31 Aug 13 - 06:51 AM

There was a clip of an interview with him on TV yesterday, in his study. In the background was a large, stuffed bird - An Bonnán Buí, The Yellow Bittern of poem and song!

Regards

Subject: RE: Obit: Poet Seamus Heaney (1939 - 2013)
From: MartinRyan
Date: 31 Aug 13 - 06:54 AM

Ooops - just realised Peter has provided a link to Heaney reading the original poem...

Regards

Subject: RE: Obit: Poet Seamus Heaney (1939 - 2013)
From: MartinRyan
Date: 31 Aug 13 - 06:58 AM

... together with his own version.

Regards

p.s. maybe I should go back to bed and start the day again, later.

Subject: RE: Obit: Poet Seamus Heaney (1939 - 2013)
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 31 Aug 13 - 09:55 AM

Stay awake Martin, the sun is shining, don't waste a good day.

I posted an Bonnan Bui to provide a direct link between the song tradition and Heaney poetry and translations. Any amount of poems or quotes could go here and are indeed printed everywhere in tribute at the moment.

The Irish Times' print edition has it's firs five pages fully dedicated to Heaney today, all other news pushed back.

Fintan O Toole's piece Comfort is best found in Seamus Heaney's poems fills the front page.

Full coverage here.

Subject: RE: Obit: Poet Seamus Heaney (1939 - 2013)
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 31 Aug 13 - 11:39 AM

Thanks to the Mod who restored this to it's place above the line.

RTE has the film Seamus Heaney : Out of the Marvelous on it's player but I am uncertain about its availability outside Ireland.

Subject: RE: Obit: Poet Seamus Heaney (1939 - 2013)
From: Matthew Edwards
Date: 31 Aug 13 - 12:08 PM

Heaney certainly knew the songs and ballads of his native Ulster well, and he was a great friend of the song collector, singer and broadcaster Davey Hammond for whom he wrote a very moving tribute in "The Human Chain".

Heaney quoted extensively from Magherafelt May Fair in his commencement address at the University of North Carolina in May 1996.

Matthew

Subject: RE: Obit: Poet Seamus Heaney (1939 - 2013)
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 31 Aug 13 - 12:43 PM

Yes, that reminds me of his poem that gave it's name and was re-produced on the cover of Hammond's lp 'The Singer's House'

When they said Carrckfergus I could hear
the frosty echo of saltminers' picks
I imagined it, chambered and glinting,
a township built of light

it ends:

When I came here first you were always singing,
a hint of the clip of the pick
in your winnowing climb and attack.
Raise it again, man. We still believe what we hear.

Subject: RE: Obit: Poet Seamus Heaney (1939 - 2013)
From: ChanteyLass
Date: 31 Aug 13 - 05:44 PM

Just been listening to a tribute to him on Celtic Sojourn, WGBH radio's Saturday afternoon radio program. Sorry that he has died.