Seamus Heaney, one of Ireland's greatest poets, has died
by sernabad
Seamus Heaney, one of Ireland's most revered poets, died yesterday in Dublin.
Mr. Heaney was born in County Derry, Ireland, 1939, the eldest of nine children. His gift for poetry received increasing recognition, beginning in 1964 when The New Statesman, Britain's 100-year-old political and cultural magazine, published three of his poems.
He wrote poignantly and in equal measure of Ireland's Troubles and of his deep love of family. One of his most famous collections, (North, 1975), has poems on both topics.
He was a gifted academician, having taught at Harvard and Oxford. At the latter, his lecture series turned into the book, The Redress of Poetry in 1995. Also, that year he won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
He was also a renowned essayist. One of his most well-known collection, the 1980 Preoccupations: Selected Prose, 1968-1978, was a critical examination of such well-known writers, as Wordsworth, Yeats, and Sylvia Plath.
He also produced an outstanding translation of Beowulf in 1999.
In lieu of an autobiography, Heaney agreed to a series of interviews with poet Dennis O'Driscoll, his good friend. The resulting book, Stepping Stones, was published in 2008.
Two of the most moving tributes to Mr. Heaney's passing can be found here -- The Guardian and The New York Times.
Mr. Heaney, who was 74, had suffered a stroke in 2006 and had been in poor health ever since.
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