Whether autobiographical, topical, or specifically literary, these writings circle the central preoccupying questions of Seamus Heaney's career: "How should a poet properly live and write? What is his relationship to be to his own voice, his own place, his literary heritage and the contemporary world?" Along with a selection from the poet's three previous collections of prose (Preoccupations, The Government of the Tongue, and The Redress of Poetry),...

In this critical study, Adam Wyeth unravels the many rich and varied ancient Celtic legends which run through contemporary Irish poetry. Each chapter begins with a poem by one of Ireland's leading poets, followed by sharp, shrewd analysis of its making and references. As well as poetry's inner workings, the reader will discover a wealth of Celtic culture - their gods, heroes, and folklore - and its continuing role in Ireland's identity today. ""Recommended...

"Modern Poetry and Ethnography: Yeats, Frost, Warren, Heaney, and the Poet as Anthropologist maps a new approach to the works of W.B. Yeats, Robert Frost, Robert Penn Warren, and Seamus Heaney. Heuston analyzes the ways the works of each writer represent and explain a country or region (Ireland for Yeats, New England for Frost, the American South for Warren, and Northern Ireland for Heaney) as if the writers were anthropologists or ethnographers....