The Redress of Poetry

by Seamus Heaney

Book Overview

Seamus Heaney defines the title of this work of criticism as follows: "To redress poetry is to know and celebrate it for its forcibleness as itself . . . not only as a matter of profferd argument and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374248532
• ISBN13: 9780374248536
• Release Date: January 1995
• Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
• Length: 211 Pages
• Weight: 2.16 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.8" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Strong Enough To Help

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!