Seamus Heaney (1939-2013) received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995. His poems, plays, translations, and essays include Opened Ground, Electric Light, Beowulf, The Spirit Level, District and Circle, and Finders Keepers. Robert Lowell praised Heaney as the most important Irish poet since Yeats.
"[Heaney's] approach to poetry--sensitive but tolerant, and attentive to beauty above all--suffuses Finders Keepers. It will delight those who have come to love Heaney's own rich and humane verse." --Adam Kirsch, The Boston Globe "A collection of Heaney's biographical reminiscences and frequently rhapsodic but meticulous critical essays. Heaney's is a lifelong romance with words." --Christina Cho, The New York Times Book Review "[Heaney's] critical prose can be as impassioned and as musical as the verse he's explicating...Heaney takes us to those places where we can find the genuine consolation that literature can provide." --Charles Matthews, The Seattle Times
In his prose work, Heaney's critical method is to borrow and spin: he'll take an idea from another writer and put it to new use as he bores into the subject at hand. Describing the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop, for example, Heaney quotes from fellow poet Charles Simic's essay on Joseph Cornell to describe what we do when we read Bishop: we look at the image we see and the one we imagine at the same time. Another characteristic of Heaney's approach is that he never presents a static picture but always describes the artist or artwork in motion. It is not for nothing that Heaney likens his pen to a spade, for again and again the Nobel prize-winning poet puts his earthy Irish practicality to the service of criticism as he delves into the life and work of the major Anglophone poets, himself included. Here his prose is divided into three sections: autobiographical or topical essays; studies of Yeats, Dylan Thomas, and other individual authors; and then "a kind of kite-tail, a stringing out of miscellaneous pieces that for all their brevity retain, I hope, a certain interest." They do: Heaney may borrow his tools, but he always uses them to unearth new literary treasure. Recommended for all academic and large public libraries. David Kirby, Florida State Univ., Tallahassee Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
"[Heaney's] approach to poetry--sensitive but tolerant, and attentive to beauty above all--suffuses Finders Keepers. It will delight those who have come to love Heaney's own rich and humane verse." --Adam Kirsch, The Boston Globe "A collection of Heaney's biographical reminiscences and frequently rhapsodic but meticulous critical essays. Heaney's is a lifelong romance with words." --Christina Cho, The New York Times Book Review "[Heaney's] critical prose can be as impassioned and as musical as the verse he's explicating...Heaney takes us to those places where we can find the genuine consolation that literature can provide." --Charles Matthews, The Seattle Times
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