Seamus Heaney

Field Work is the record of four years during which Seamus Heaney left the violence of Belfast to settle in a country cottage with his family in Glanmore, County Wicklow. Heeding "an early warning system to get back inside my own head," Heaney wrote poems with a new strength and maturity, moving from the political concerns of his landmark volume North to a more personal, contemplative approach to the world and to his own writing. In Field Work he "brings a meditative music to bear upon fundamental themes of person and place, the mutuality of ourselves and the world" (Denis Donoghue, The New York Times Book Review).

Poems

Field Work

Will Vunderink

"Field Work," which first appeared in 1979, is a superb collection of lyrics and narrative poems from one of the literary masters of our time. As the critic Dennis Donoghue wrote in "The New York Times Book Review": "In 1938, not a moment too soon, W. B. Yeats admonished his colleagues: 'Irish poets, learn your trade.' Seamus Heaney, born the following year, has learned his trade so well that it is now a second nature wonderfully responsive to his first. And the proof is in "Field Work," a superb book . . . [This is] a perennial poetry offered at a time when many of us have despaired of seeing such a thing." Seamus Heaney received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995. His recent translations include "Beowulf" and "Diary of One Who Vanished"; his recent poetry collections include "Opened Ground" and "Electric Light." "Field Work," which first appeared in 1979, is a superb collection of lyrics and narrative poems from one of the literary masters of our time. As the critic Dennis Donoghue wrote in "The New York Times Book Review": "In 1938, not a moment too soon, W. B. Yeats admonished his colleagues: 'Irish poets, learn your trade.' Seamus Heaney, born the following year, has learned his trade so well that it is now a second nature wonderfully responsive to his first. And the proof is in "Field Work," a superb book . . . [This is] a perennial poetry offered at a time when many of us have despaired of seeing such a thing." "Heaney is keyed and pitched unlike any significant poet now at work in the language, anywhere."--Harold Bloom, "The Times Literary Supplement" "For all the qualities I list, the most important is song [and] the tune Heaney sings [is] poetry's tune, resolutions of cherished language."--Donald Hall, "The Nation"

Field Work Poems

Reviews