h'm
I guess I occupy something like the middle on this - I do think Heaney's
reputation is inflated, inflated in part because the 'industry' -
commercial, academic etc - requires its incumbent 'great poets'; altho' I've
not loked at his Beowulf - as far as that's concerned such interest I have
is reserved for crib-assisted forays into the 'original', as much as I as a
creature of now can apprehend it - but I have painful memories of his dull
adaptations of Sweeney; Heaney for me lacks rhythmic energy, writes and
publishes too much and often lapses into a kind of pseudo-mystical
verbalism, however, I regard him as having a fine eye, an intermittently
nice that is exact ear, and as the author of a small number of
semi-traditional poems of real quality - I for one have a lot of time for
'Casualty'. Reading him in bulk tho' can be very wearisome, as indeed can
Derek Walcott's work prove so.
I s'pose a lot cld be writ about why it is, apart from vested interests,
our culture wants to create 'the big man' figures again and again, and so
deprive so many other voices of audience. Hierarchies, hierarchies, I want
to be a Quaker.
David
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