Following my surprising foray into poetry? as a pandemic project, I applied for and was accepted into a yearlong program at Brooklyn Poets — lots of writing, lots of reading, lots of critique, lots of class. One of the elements of the program is that each participant chooses a poet to do a yearlong deep-dive read. Because I’m particularly interested in translation and reworking medieval texts, I’ve chosen Seamus Heaney. I feel a little intimidated about having to be intelligent about the work of a poet that is totally out of my context, as if I should be able to jump in and be brilliant just because I already know how to read text; but if I can screw up my courage, I’ll try to blog my way through reading Heaney’s oeuvre.
I’ve kept the secondary literature to a minimum, partly so that I’m approaching the poetry without it being filtered through others’ readings first, and partly, honestly, just because there are still only 24 hours in a day and I have an academic book, a trade book, and a translation that I’m also supposed to be working on, plus all the other stuff… But in any case, what I’m reading this year is after the jump:
A Personal Seamus Heaney Syllabus
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/seamus-heaney
https://www.seamusheaney.com/work-and-writings
R.F. Foster. On Seamus Heaney. Princeton: UP, 2020.
Bernard O’Donoghue, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Seamus Heaney. Cambridge: UP, 2009.
Part I: Beowulf. (March/April)
Beowulf, trans. Seamus Heaney.
—, trans. Maria Dhavana Hadley.
—, trans. J.R.R. Tolkien
Daniel Donoghue, “The Philologer Poet: Seamus Heaney and the Translation of Beowulf,” Harvard Review 19 (2000): 12-21.
Hugh Magennis, “Seamus Heaney: A Living Speech Raised to the Power of Verse,” in Translating Beowulf: Modern Versions in English Verse. Boydell and Brewer, 2011. 161-190
Connor McCarthy. Seamus Heaney and Medieval Poetry. Boydell and Brewer, 2008.
Heather O’Donoghue, “Heaney, Beowulf, and the Literature of the Medieval North,” in The Cambridge Companion to Seamus Heaney, ed. Bernard O’Donoghue. Cambridge: UP, 2009. 192-205.
Part II: Other Translations (April/May)
Pangur Bán: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/48267/pangur-ban
Sweeney Astray: A Version from the Irish. New York: FSG, 1985.
Sophocles. The Burial at Thebes: A New Version of Antigone, trans. Seamus Heaney. London: Faber and Faber, 2005 reprint.
—. The Cure at Troy: A Version of Sophocles’ Plioctetes. London: Faber and Faber, 1991.
Virgil. The Aneid, Book VI, trans. Seamus Heaney. London: Faber and Faber, 2017 reprint.
Ovid. The Midnight Verdict. New York: Gallery Books, 2001.
Dante. Inferno, Canto I. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-05-23-bk-38605-story.html
Aidan O’Malley, “Translation,” Seamus Heaney in Context, ed. Geraldine Higgins. Cambridge: UP, 2021.
Part III: Heaney, poet. (July/August/September)
Seamus Heaney. Death of a Naturalist. Door Into the Dark. Wintering Out. North. Field Work. Station Island. The Haw Lantern. Seeing Things. The Spirit Level. Electric Light. District and Circle.
—. The Redress of Poetry. New York: FSG, 1995.
Michael Cavanagh. Professing Poetry: Heaney’s Poetics. Washignton: Catholic University of America Press, 2009.
Part IV: Heaney, editor. (November)
W.B. Yeats. Poems Selected by Seamus Heaney. London: Faber and Faber, 2001.
William Woodsworth. Poems Selected by Seamus Heaney. London: Faber and Faber, 2016 reprint.
Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes. The Rattle Bag. New York: FSG, 2005 reprint.
—. The School Bag. London: Faber and Faber, 1997.
Margaret Mills Harper. “W.B. Yeats,” in Seamus Heaney in Context, ed. Geraldine Higgins. Cambridge: UP, 2021.
Seamus Heaney. Preoccupations: Selected Prose. New York: FSG, 1981.