Helen Vendler traces Heaney's invention as it evolves from his beginnings in "Death of a Naturalist" through his most recent volume, "The Spirit Level." In sections entitled "Second Thoughts, " she considers an often neglected but crucial part of Heaney's evolving talent: self-revision. Here we see how later poems return to the themes or genres of the earlier volumes, and reconceive them in light of the poet's later attitudes or techniques Vendler surveys all of Heaney's efforts in the classical forms - elegy, genre-scene, sonnet, parable, confessional poem, poem of perception - and brings to light his aesthetic and moral attitudes.
- ISBN10 067479611X
- ISBN13 9780674796119
- Publish Date 15 November 1998
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 9 April 2010
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Harvard University Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 224
- Language English