Seamus Heaney, RIP

A sad, sad day, Heaney's passing at 74.  If anyone ever asserts that poetry is only warm and fuzzy or merely soft and pretty, send them to Heaney's "Digging," "Blackberry-Picking," or his "Mid-Term Break":

Mid-Term Break

I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At two o'clock our neighbors drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying--
He had always taken funerals in his stride--
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble,'
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,
He lay in the four foot box as in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four foot box, a foot for every year.


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(via Matt Ryan)

http://explore.noodle.org/post/59782180118/the-poet-who-didnt-feel-the-pressure-at-a

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nice tribute from Firedoglake (videos of poet speaking, reading):

http://lafiga.firedoglake.com/2013/08/31/rip-seamus-heaney-irish-poet-nobel-laureate/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

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from NYT:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/31/arts/seamus-heaney-acclaimed-irish-poet-dies-at-74.html?_r=1&

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from reader Matt V (thank you, btw):

One of my favorites of his, including a clip of him reading it. Sadly but beautifully appropriate, under the circumstances.
http://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/poems/heaney/the_harvest_bow.php

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some kind words from Bono on Heaney's passing:

http://www.hotpress.com/news/10153963.html