The Redress of Poetry

Rating:
Summary: The Best Collection of Essays on Poetry I have Ever Read
Review: Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney has compiled a collection of essays on poetry that are deeply insightful, filled with the kind of knowledge that only a master can articulate. Bishop, Yeats, Merriman, Thomas, and others are treated with deep thought, care, and honesty... Heaney is careful to acknowledge that his opinions are just that... his opinions... but he is someone who imparts so much knowledge of poetry, that his opinons would be the first I would seek out, regarding any confusions I may have regarding poetry.. This is a fabulous book! It is better than reading most poetry!

I recommend this book to everyone.

Rating:
Summary: Strong Enough To Help
Review: The Redress of Poetry is a series of lectures given by Seamus Heaney at Oxford; in all of them, he examines poetry and how it can be strong enough to help the reader, to act as an equal force to the life lived by the reader. He looks at all kinds of poets - Dylan Thomas, Christopher Marlowe, Yeats, Wilde and Bishop - and of course talks about his own position as a Catholic from the Northern Ireland living in Dublin. In all the lectures Heaney is wonderfully informal and funny, while still solidly getting across how important and vital these writers are. The lecture on Thomas alone is a great lesson on writing and authenticity, and the last one, "Frontiers of Writing", makes a strong case that a nation is imagined by writers first - that language, poetry, opens up possibilities in nations as well as in people. Though he knows that words can't do everything, Heaney's affection for writing and writers is convincing. At his best, he made me want to go back to the poet and read more, and not many people can make me do that!