The Spirit Level: Poems

I wish I could say I liked or understood these poems more than I do. Seamus Heaney is a Nobel- Prize winning, and most highly regarded poet. This volume is the first which appeared after he received the Nobel Prize. The 'spirit level' is a reference to a carpenter's tool used to level things off. The collection is supposedly built in one sense around the idea of 'balance', material and spiritual balance. The first thing that struck me about the poetry is the richness of its vocabulary, the frequency of neologism. Heaney was a student of Anglo- Saxon , and his translation of 'Beowulf' is considered one of the best. Clearly he has a mastery of the language and its rhythms . And he has a strong sense too of the observed natural world. A lot of his lines are lines of precise seeing . "And some time make the time to drive out west Into Country Clare, along the Flaggy Shore, In September or October, when the wind And the light are working off each other So that the ocean on one side is wild With foam and glitter, and inland among stones The surface of a slate- grey lake is lit By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans, Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white, Their fully grown headstrong- looking heads Tucked or cresting or busy underwater." Again this is powerful and precise observation, and clear strong language. Nonetheless in reading the poems I did not get from them what I do get from the poetry of his great countryman , Yeats. Yeats is filled with memorable lines and a music which sings, rings and lingers in the mind. Heaney is intellectually complex and scholarly. Aside from my difficulty in just understanding the plain sense , the music , as I read the poems aloud somehow escapes me. Yet I am very well aware that I am probably talking more about my own limitations , rather than Heaney's.

It is very easy to automatically compare Seamus Heaney with WB Yeats: they are both Irish, they both write about Irish legend and the Irish landscpae, yet the similaritiues stop there. In the first publications of poems from Heaney since winning the Nobel Prize for Literature he deals with subjects which strike a chord of sincerity for his reader, as was the case in many of his earlier poems, but this latest work is more stylistically controlled. This does not mean that he stays within a more limited framework, on the contrary, you feel that this collection is a fist hand demonstration of the growth of Heaney as a poet. He tackles the highly complex and political theme of the Ireland Troubles brilliantly in 'Mycenae Lookout', but then returns to the evocatively simple style that we find in 'St Kevin and the Blackbird'. The whle collection is so efforlessly skillful that you wonder why it took him so long to complete it. It is only after the second or third reading that the deeper complexities are absorbed. It is here that the reader may find some of the weaknesses of the collection. Heaney, although a master of his style, his poetry is not quite as intricate as, say TS Eliot, nor is it as impassioned or spontaneous as Beaudelaire (not that I am Heaney specifically to these poets alone, they too have their many weaknesses where Heaney excels). Despite this, Heaney is truly one of the best contemporary poets, and I personally feel he has many great works still to come.

Seamus Heaney has never shied away from the fact that poetry is craft as much as art- a duality neatly exemplified by the title of his latest collection.For Heaney, poetry itself is the spirit level, the tool with which balance is found, whether that balance be between his hatred of the troubles dividing Ireland and his own ambivalence about his role in them, or between the pleasures of reminiscence and the uncomfortable responsibilities of adulthood that transform reminiscence into idyll. The sensuality of Heaney's poetry is unavoidable and joyous, from the auditory fantasy of "The Rain Stick" through the ludicrous picture painted in "Keeping Going" to the gentle admonition of "Postscript" to open ourselves to the wonderful in the everyday. His portraiture is always accurately scaled- the minimalist charcoal sketch of "Sandymount Strand" is as appropriate to its subject as the Norman Rockwell painting that is "A Sofa In The Forties". That Heaney is a master of both is no surprise- but it's always a pleasure.

Seamus Heaney's The Spirit Level is another meticulously crafted collection of spirited poems by the winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize for Literature. Heaney never disappoints. He brings to quite small poems, such as his lyrical reflection on mint, the same intense gaze which illuminates his poems dealing with the more complex concerns of religious faith and history. His poetry, while deeply embedded in the traditions of Irish writing, constantly surprises the reader with its flashes of sheer contemporary intelligence and language. The way Heaney effortlessly weds these has created a formidable and distinct poetic voice. For me, some of the most memorable poems in this collection are from the sequence, "Mycenae Lookout", a re-telling of the Trojan Wars. These display his easy shifts from a contemporary imagination to one equally informed by history. In his own words from the final poem of this collection, "Postcript", Heaney can "catch the heart off guard and blow it open". A must for any serious poetry lover.