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"Death of a Naturalist" by Seamus Heaney

Professing Poetry: Seamus Heaney's Poetics by Michael Cavanagh
Call Number: eBook
ISBN: 9780813216713
Publication Date: 2009-06-01
Nobel Prize winning Irish writer Seamus Heaney has been an ambitious critic as well as poet, publishing five books of literary criticism in the four decades of his career. This book surveys his critical essays, setting forth Heaneys poetics, his concept of what poetry should be and what its uses are and relating them to his practice as a poet.
Shades of Authority by Stephen James
Call Number: eBook
ISBN: 9781846311178
Publication Date: 2008-03-15
What is the relationship between poetry and power? Should poetry be considered a mode of authority or an impotent medium? And why is it that the modern poets most commonly regarded as authoritative are precisely those whose works wrestle with a sense of artistic inadequacy? Such questions lie at the heart of this study, prompting fresh insights into three of the most important poets of recent decades: Robert Lowell, Geoffrey Hill and Seamus Heaney. Through attentive close reading and the tracing of dominant motifs in each writer's works, James shows how their responsiveness to matters of political and cultural import lends weight to the idea of poetry as authoritative utterance, as a medium for speaking of and to the world in a persuasive, memorable manner. And yet, as James demonstrates, each poet is exercised by an awareness of his own cultural marginality, even by a sense of the limitations and liabilities of language itself.
Seamus Heaney's Early Work by Daniel Xerri
Call Number: eBook
ISBN: 9781933146911
Publication Date: 2009-07-15
Discusses a critical element in the early poetry of Seamus Heaney: the question of poetic duty and responsibility, with specific reference to the poetry he published before moving from Ulster to the Irish Republic. The work demonstrates how his first four poetry collections exhibit a progression in how the poet, after coming to grips with his artistic vocation, finally discovers the means by which to address the terrible events that afflicted Northern Ireland at the time.

Exploration and Colonization (Bloom's Literary Themes)
Call Number: PN56. C63 E97 2010
ISBN: 1604134429
Publication Date: 2010-03-01
Contains the essay ""Seamus Heaney, colonialism, and the cure: Sophoclean re-visions" by Hugh Denard

"Regionalism, globalization and Seamus Heaney’s Latin lift-off" by Justin Quinn
This article examines Seamus Heaney’s use of Latin in his poetry, and its connections with larger thematics of world literature. It argues that the work of his last two decades can no longer be characterized by a postcolonial framework, but rather sidesteps issues of empire to explore the ways in which the local circulates in globalized culture.
"Seamus Heaney, The Art of Poetry No. 75" by Henri Cole
In an interview, poet Seamus Heaney discusses his work. Among the topics addressed are how teaching has affected his writing, his childhood in Ireland, whether poetry can affect politics, the critics he finds perceptive, and the poets that have influenced him.
"Seamus Heaney's tender Yeats" by Terence Brown
The essay examines the influential nature of the life and works of W. B. Yeats as a significant force in development of Seamus Heaney's career.
""Urbanatural Roosting" in the poetry of Seamus Heaney" by Ashton Nichols
"Like Wordsworth, Seamus Heaney possesses an urbanatural tendency which reveals that, even in as richly natural an environment as Ireland--from Dublin and Wicklow in the east, all the way to Galway and the Dingle Peninsula in Western Ireland--poetry has the ability to link human and wild, cultural and natural, city space with wilderness space--in ways that teach poets and readers something new about the human connection between both worlds. In his urbanatural poems, Heaney's sensitivity provides access to a world of union, not division, a world where cities are linked to natural landscapes in ways that have been celebrated by poets from Wordsworth to Mary Oliver."
"Seamus Heaney’s Revelation of Self Through Community" by Sharon Moore
The study is based on the argument that a sound knowledge of a writer’s personal psychological development is just as enlightening as historical and political contexts. This psychoanalytical approach applies the theory of Object Relations to determine early attachments and identification processes, and leads to fresh readings of Heaney’spoems. References cover a span of forty years from Death of a Naturalist (1966) to District and Circle (2006). Heaney’s poetry presents self, parents, ancestors, and community as interdependent elements and his sense of self is ultimately revealed through identification with his first experiences of community. The poet’s search for harmony and unity also acknowledges the tension, paradoxes, and problems associated with self-discovery. Recognizing and accepting the darkness of past lives as formative, the poet constantly strives for self-knowledge, harmony, and catharsis.

Seamus Heaney: Looking Back
Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney has been judged by Robert Lowell to be the most important Irish poet since Yeats. This classic program looks back over Heaney’s career at the time his best-selling collection Seeing Things—a return to the rural childhood territory of his very first book—was published, offering a rare opportunity to hear the poet read and discuss his work. Through poems including "Death of a Naturalist," "The Toome Road," "Wheels Within Wheels," "The Strand at Lough Beg" and "Seeing Things," he describes his efforts to balance losses with life’s marvels, the lyrical with the elegiac, and social responsibility with creative freedom in a society divided by religion and politics. (52 minutes)
Bloody Sunday & the Fisherman's Ghost (podcast)
How Seamus Heaney defines Ireland's 1972 troubles with a portrait of a drunken seaman blown up in a pub. (14:56)

Poetry Foundation: Seamus Heaney
Includes links to poetry, articles, live readings, and discussions of the authors works.

"Death of a Naturalist" by Seamus Heaney
Full-text of Heaney's poem "Death of a Naturalist"

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