The Letters of Seamus Heaney

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The letters provide us with an intimate, multilayered understanding of this extraordinary poet's life and mind.Every now and again I need to get down here, to get into the Diogenes tub, as it were, or the Colmcille beehive hut, or the Mossbawn scullery. At any rate, a hedge surrounds me, the blackbird calls, the soul settles for an hour or two.In this astute selection from Seamus Heaney's vast correspondence, we are given direct access to the life and poetic development of a literary titan, from his early days in Belfast, through his controversial decision to settle in the Republic, to the gradual broadening of horizons that culminated in the award of the Nobel Prize in Literature and the years of international eminence that kept him heroically busy until his death.Christopher Reid draws from both public and private archives to reveal this remarkable story in the poet's own words. Generous, funny, exuberant, confiding, irreverent, empathetic, and...