Electric Light Poems

The powerful collection by the bestselling translator ofBeowulf In the finland of perch, the fenland of alder, on air That is water, on carpets of Bann stream, on hold In the everything flows and steady go of the world. --from "Perch" Seamus Heaney's collection travels widely in time and space, visiting the sites of the classical world and revisiting the poet's childhood: rural electrification and the light of ancient evenings are reconciled within the orbit of a single lifetime. This is a book about origins (not least, the origins of words) and oracles: the places where things start from, the ground of understanding -- whether in Arcadia or Anahorish, the sanctuary at Epidaurus or the Bann valley in County Derry. Electric Lightranges from short takes to conversation poems. The pre-Socratic wisdom that everything flows is held in tension with the elegizing of friends and fellow poets. These gifts of recollection renew the poet's calling to assign things their proper names; once again Heaney can be heard exting his word hoard and roll call in this, his eleventh collection.

Seamus Heaney received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995. A resident of Dublin since 1976, he teaches regularly at Harvard University. His recent publications include Beowulf (FSG, 2000), Diary of One Who Vanished (FSG, 2000), and Opened Ground (FSG, 1998).