Field Work

Field Work is Seamus Heaney's fifth book of poems, and his first to be published in this country. His strong and beautiful verse already has a following on American campuses, and this fine new book will undoubtedly extend the range of his influence. His Ireland is an "island. . . full of comfortless voices"; he lived in Belfast for many years, as the elegies for the war dead ("Casualty," "A Postcard from North Antrim," etc.) and other troubled poems attest. "Ugolino," the translation of a passage from The Divine Comedy, also concerns war and vengeance, and injustice: "For the sins/ of Ugolino, who betrayed your forts,/ Should never have been visited on his sons." The delicate "Elegy" is a memory of Robert Lowell's last days. But Heaney's Ireland is also quotidian: "She came every morning to draw water/ Like an old bat staggering up the field:/ The pump's whooping cough, the bucket's clatter/ And slow diminuendo as it filled,/ Announced her." Ten "Glanmore Sonnets," which occupy a central place in the book, commemorate an easing in the poet's life, a time when "Vowels ploughed into other: opened ground"; and this is the "field work" of the title poem as well. Looking at an ugly badger, Heaney asks: "How perilous is it to choose/ not to love the life we're shown?" Waist-deep in language, he does. A fine introduction to a staunch, resonant spirit. (Kirkus Reviews)