The title, The Government of the Tongue, carries suggestions of both monastic discipline and untrammelled romanticism, and is meant to raise an old question about the rights and status of poetic utterance itself. Should it be governed? Should it be the governor?
Seamus Heaney here scrutinizes the work of several poets, British and Irish, American and European, whose work is responsive to such strains and tensions.
- ISBN10 0571147968
- ISBN13 9780571147960
- Publish Date October 1988
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 18 February 2000
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Faber & Faber
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 196
- Language English