punning memento mori. "Seeing the bags . . . passed hand to hand/. . . by the aid workers," the poet recalls his own sack-heaving epiphany: "Nothing surpassed//That quick unburdening, backbreak's truest payback,/A letting go which will not come again./Or it will, once. And for all." [Seamus] Heaney continues to write about his life in Ireland and America, as citizen and scholar, and about the literature that informs his life (for example, a reworking of Virgil's "Aeneid").As he focuses on last things, however, the need for human connection intensifies; seeing and being seen are vital to such give-and-take. The title poem notes "[t]he eye-to-eye, one-two, one-two upswing."
from San Francisco Chronicle: Roundup of poetry books
~~~~~~~~~~~
No comments :
Post a Comment