Melvyn P. Leffler, Stettinius Professor of History at the University of Virginia, is the author of A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War, which won the Bancroft Prize, the Farrell Prize, and the Hoover Book Award in 1993.
"This is . . . not just a new book but a book with newness in it,
as all Heaney's collections have been. It marks a sustained effort,
not exactly to unite the two parts of himself and his cultural
inheritance but rather to make the line between them more permeable
than before." --Nicholas Jenkins, The Times Literary Supplement"So
many of [Heaney's] poems have become personal lodestones for us
that reading this new book is like awakening to an experience both
fresh and familiar. From his earliest poems, he has presented the
ordinary sensations of the physical world radiantly, causing us to
hear the 'clean new music' of a voice calling down into a well,
showed us the 'sloped honeycomb' of a thatched roof or the tactile
wholesomeness of 'new potatoes that we picked / Loving their
coolhardness in our hands' . . . Thoroughly grounded as he is in
what Richard Wilbur, using a phrase from religious texts, simply
and memorably called 'the things of this world, ' this son of an
Irish farming family offers a vision that is a powerful tonic
against the fin de siecle alienation and solipsism touted by
fashionable literary criticism." --Richard Tillinghast, The New
York Times Book Review"Heaney's craftsmanship is at its most
variable. There are poems that approach the sardonic leanness of
those eastern European writers his essays so often celebrate. The
fifth section of 'The Thimble, ' for example, simply reads: 'And so
on.' Elsewhere, the language may be layered extra thickly, with
adjectives and nouns melding into foursomes." --Carol Rumens, New
Statesman & Society
This is . . . not just a new book but a book with newness in it, as
all Heaney's collections have been. It marks a sustained effort,
not exactly to unite the two parts of himself and his cultural
inheritance but rather to make the line between them more permeable
than before. "Nicholas Jenkins, The Times Literary Supplement" So
many of [Heaney's] poems have become personal lodestones for us
that reading this new book is like awakening to an experience both
fresh and familiar. From his earliest poems, he has presented the
ordinary sensations of the physical world radiantly, causing us to
hear the 'clean new music' of a voice calling down into a well,
showed us the 'sloped honeycomb' of a thatched roof or the tactile
wholesomeness of 'new potatoes that we picked / Loving their
coolhardness in our hands' . . . Thoroughly grounded as he is in
what Richard Wilbur, using a phrase from religious texts, simply
and memorably called 'the things of this world, ' this son of an
Irish farming family offers a vision that is a powerful tonic
against the fin de siecle alienation and solipsism touted by
fashionable literary criticism. "Richard Tillinghast, The New York
Times Book Review" Heaney's craftsmanship is at its most variable.
There are poems that approach the sardonic leanness of those
eastern European writers his essays so often celebrate. The fifth
section of 'The Thimble, ' for example, simply reads: 'And so on.'
Elsewhere, the language may be layered extra thickly, with
adjectives and nouns melding into foursomes. "Carol Rumens, New
Statesman & Society""
"This is . . . not just a new book but a book with newness in it,
as all Heaney's collections have been. It marks a sustained effort,
not exactly to unite the two parts of himself and his cultural
inheritance but rather to make the line between them more permeable
than before."--Nicholas Jenkins, "The Times Literary
Supplement"
"So many of [Heaney's] poems have become personal lodestones for us
that reading this new book is like awakening to an experience both
fresh and familiar. From his earliest poems, he has presented the
ordinary sensations of the physical world radiantly, causing us to
hear the 'clean new music' of a voice calling down into a well,
showed us the 'sloped honeycomb' of a thatched roof or the tactile
wholesomeness of 'new potatoes that we picked / Loving their
coolhardness in our hands' . . . Thoroughly grounded as he is in
what Richard Wilbur, using a phrase from religious texts, simply
and memorably called 'the things of this world, ' this son of an
Irish farming family offers a vision that is a powerful tonic
against the fin de siecle alienation and solipsism touted by
fashionable literary criticism."--Richard Tillinghast, "The New
York Times Book Review"
"Heaney's craftsmanship is at its most variable. There are poems
that approach the sardonic leanness of those eastern European
writers his essays so often celebrate. The fifth section of 'The
Thimble, ' for example, simply reads: 'And so on.' Elsewhere, the
language may be layered extra thickly, with adjectives and nouns
melding into foursomes."--Carol Rumens, "New Statesman & Society"
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