This Strange Loneliness: Heaney's Wordsworth

This Strange Loneliness explores the poetic relationship between Seamus Heaney and William Wordsworth, highlighting their shared interests in poetry and education, transcendence, and late style. Mackay traces Heaney's readings of Wordsworth throughout his career, revealing their common concerns and the importance of late style in poetry. The book also explores Heaney's negotiation of Irish and British culture and identity to claim a persistent form of kinship and forge a strange community with the Romantic poet.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 352 pages
Publication date: 15 April 2021
Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press

This Strange Loneliness: Seamus Heaney and William Wordsworth's Poetic Relationship is a comprehensive exploration of the poetic relationship between two of the most influential poets of the 20th century. Peter Mackay delves into how Heaney repeatedly turns to Wordsworth's work for inspiration, corroboration, and amplification, and as a model for the fortifying power of poetry itself. Through an in-depth look at archival materials and uncollected poems and prose by Heaney, Mackay traces the evolution of Heaney's readings of Wordsworth throughout his career, revealing their shared interest in the connections between poetry and education, the possibility of a beneficial understanding of poetic influence, the complexities of place and displacement, ideas of transcendence, and ultimately the importance of late style. Placing Heaney's readings within their political, historical, and poetic contexts, the book also explores how he negotiated the complex relationship between Irish and British culture and identity to claim a persistent form of kinship and forge a strange community with the Romantic poet. With illuminating readings that reveal new contexts to and currents in Heaney's work, This Strange Loneliness is a powerful evocation of the Irish poet's sense of the uplift that poetry can provide.

Weight: 514g
Dimension: 150 x 228 x 24 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780228005728