I was introduced to the poetry of Seamus Heaney when I was in graduate school. Even though money then was extremely tight, I bought two slender paperback collections of his poems then, Death of a Naturalist (1966) and Field Work (Farrar, Straus, Giroux; 1979). As you can see from the photograph of the remaining volume, I read them and read them almost into tatters. When Heaney spoke at the Guthrie in Minneapolis 1996, shortly after he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, I was thrilled to be in the audience. (Thank you, MPR, for archiving the recording of his talk that day!)

His work undoubtedly stands the test of time, and I continue to see new facets of his understated brilliance and expansive vision each time I read a poem anew. Oddly, I don’t see any direct influence in my own work. Maybe it is so pervasive I am blind to it? Or perhaps Heaney is so much part of the soil of Ireland (in addition to being a citizen of the world) that he cannot be imitated? I don’t know. But I thought that this morning I would share the opening lines of his homage elegy poem to Boston’s own Robert Lowell. This poem is simply called “Elegy.” In opening my copy to it today, the spine shattered, which I find somehow appropriate.

Elegy

The way we are living,
timorous or bold,
with have been our life,
Robert Lowell,

the sill geranium lit
by the lamp I write by,
a wind from the Irish Sea
is shaking it--

here where we sat
ten days ago, with you,
the master elegist
and welder of English...."

Seamus Heaney

Background on My Poem for the Day, “Letter to a Yellow Chair”:

Just this photograph!

Happy Reading! Happy Writing! LESLIE