Last year the world lost one of its great poets. Seamus Heaney (1939-2013) of Ireland rather quietly commanded a place at the helm of contemporary poetry, although he received overwhelming acclaim and was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1995. His verse launched a bridge between the modernism of the mid-twentieth century and the individual preoccupations of the present generation. His political consciousness conjures up memories of Yeats after 1916 as it does of a poet very close to the troubles of Northern Ireland in recent decades. At the same time his poetry reflects the universal humanist.
Fitting descriptions of him and his work come from The Poetry Foundation, which paid him tribute as “that rare thing, a poet rated highly by critics and academics yet popular with ‘the common reader.’” (quoting Blake Morrison). Part of Heaney’s popularity stems from his subject matter—modern Northern Ireland,