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LIBROS por Diego Zúñiga ¡Volvió Piglia!


Revista Qué Pasa, miércoles 28 de agosto de 2013


En 2010, el argentino Ricardo Piglia (1940) publicaba Blanco nocturno. Habían pasado 13 años desde la aparición de su novela anterior y la expectativa era alta. Muchos celebraron el regreso. Incluso, obtuvo el Premio Rómulo Gallegos. Sin embargo, varios lectores no dejaron de recalcar que Blanco nocturno estaba lejos de sus mejores novelas: un policial correcto, en el que se encontraban ciertos destellos del talento de Piglia -su inteligencia, su prosa-. Por eso, quizás, no sería raro que algunos  lectores se acercaran con cierta suspicacia a El camino de Ida, la nueva novela del reciente ganador del Premio Manuel Rojas de Narrativa 2013. Pero no. Esto es distinto. Y por eso hay que decirlo desde un comienzo: ahora sí volvió Ricardo Piglia. Y volvió también con Emilio Renzi, su álter ego y protagonista de esta nueva novela, en la que el argentino llega a hacer clases a una universidad norteamericana y se involucra en una historia policial, inspirada en el caso de Unabomber: un brillante profesor universitario que envió una serie de cartas-bomba, y que el FBI sólo logró capturar después de 20 años de búsqueda.
Piglia, entonces, arma una novela que se mueve entre el género de campus y el relato policial, alcanzando sus momentos más altos en la descripción de la vida cotidiana del terrorista, y en las distintas reflexiones literarias acerca de autores como W.H. Hudson, Tolstoi y Conrad. Es en ese cruce entre el ensayo y la narrativa donde El camino de Ida nos recuerda por qué Piglia es uno de los mejores narradores contemporáneos.

Leído mal y aplicado peor...(no hay forma de evitarlo)‏



No es que se haya leído mal a Marx.

Es que no se han leído los Evangelios
para contrastarlos…

El verdadero revolucionario es Cristo
en todos los aspectos:

Amar a los enemigos
Felices los que lloran.
Perdonar siempre.

No hay lectura posible en Marx
que se aproxime a eso
o que sea digna de llevarle
la sandalia al Señor...

Sus caminos son otros…

El baño de sangre del siglo XX
provocado en buena parte
por la acción planificada 
de las ideologías...
es una parte del baño de sangre
que sufrió el Señor en carne propia
para rescatarnos de la trampa
de la Ley del Talión, la Lucha de Clase
y la Dictadura del Proletariado...

Less is More, decía Mies...
Marx es mucho menos que eso…

Happy Birthday Charlie Parker - one day late‏


We missed Charlie Parker's birthday...
it was yesterday.

Here's a performance that showcases his
peerless gift at melody creation.

The Bird indeed...

Video:

http://www.jazzonthetube.com/page/24408.html

Los métodos de la Reforma Agraria


Diario El Mercurio, Viernes 30 de agosto de 2013

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Señor Director:

Como hija de un agricultor expropiado durante la Reforma Agraria que tuvo lugar en Chile en los años 60 y principios de los 70, creo que ha quedado en segundo plano lo que a mi juicio constituye lo más importante: los medios abusivos por los cuales ella se llevó a cabo.

En términos generales, la Reforma Agraria se desarrolló mediante un verdadero despojo perpetrado por el Estado y del cual se hizo víctimas a los agricultores expropiados, atropellando su derecho de propiedad, su libertad de emprendimiento, su igualdad ante la ley y, peor aún, la dignidad y paz con que ellos y sus familias tenían derecho a vivir.

Las expropiaciones fueron muchas veces una mera formalización de la toma violenta de los campos, perpetrada impunemente por personas que no tenían autorización legal ni judicial al efecto. Luego, en vez de castigar tales tropelías como correspondería en un estado de derecho, las autoridades procedían en la mayoría de los casos a la expropiación, fijando la indemnización de forma por completo arbitraria, a un precio irrisoriamente inferior al valor de la propiedad y pagadero hasta 20 o 30 años después, sin reajuste.

La excusa a la cual se acudió fue la supuesta explotación defectuosa de los predios expropiados por parte de sus dueños. Esta excusa ha sido puesta en duda por distintos historiadores; pero incluso si fuera verdadera en ciertos casos, ella no justificaría en modo alguno el proceder abusivo con que se condujo el Estado. Ninguna consideración económica puede legitimar la violación arbitraria de los derechos de las personas.

Como puede verse, la Reforma Agraria fue no solo gravemente injusta respecto de los agricultores expropiados y sus familias, sino que trajo consecuencias todavía más negativas para la sociedad chilena en general, entre ellas la legitimación de medios ilegales para la obtención de fines políticos, la instrumentalización arbitraria de las instituciones estatales, y el acrecentamiento gratuito del odio y la violencia que empezaron a cundir cada vez más en la sociedad chilena.

Es de esperar que en época de conmemoraciones históricas tomemos conciencia de esta grave violación a la dignidad y derechos de los agricultores expropiados y sus familias, y que los actores involucrados en la Reforma Agraria pidan perdón a la sociedad chilena por el enorme daño que causaron.

Marta Vial Risopatrón

Falacias tributarias


O. Quiroga y R. Lüders: "...lejos de afectar a los sectores más acomodados, una mayor tributación sobre la renta empeorará aún más la situación de los sectores de menores ingresos..."



  
Existe consenso sobre la conveniencia de mejorar significativamente la calidad de la educación pública. El desacuerdo está en cómo obtener los recursos para lograrlo. Michelle Bachelet desea establecer nuevos tributos, que suman un 3% del PIB. Evelyn Matthei planea establecer las condiciones necesarias para un mayor crecimiento económico que mejoraría la recaudación. En el debate se tienden a repetir ciertas consignas equivocadas, dos de las cuales denunciamos a continuación.

Falacia 1: Los impuestos a las empresas no reducen la inversión. Se argumenta que si bien algunas de las medidas propuestas por Bachelet pueden desincentivar la inversión, otras actuarían en la dirección opuesta, sembrando así la duda sobre el impacto final en ella. La realidad es que cuando -neto- se aumentan los impuestos a las empresas, se confisca una parte adicional de los flujos futuros de los proyectos en evaluación, disminuyéndolos.

Además, quienes invirtieron bajo el marco tributario vigente verán que el Estado les quita otra parte de sus utilidades. Si perciben que esto se podría repetir, agregarán este riesgo a los normales de cualquier inversión y, en consecuencia, exigirán mayor rentabilidad a sus proyectos.

Estos dos efectos harán que muchos proyectos que se habrían ejecutado sin la modificación tributaria no se materializarán. Se reducirá la inversión y el crecimiento económico.

Falacia 2: Los impuestos a las empresas los pagan los ricos. Sea de nuestro gusto o no, las empresas de bienes transables, aquellas que producen bienes que compiten con similares importados, o son exportados, como la mayoría de los bienes agrícolas, mineros y manufacturados, defenderán su rentabilidad reduciendo personal y remuneraciones, dado que no podrán subir sus precios. Si no lo logran, descartarán nuevos proyectos de inversión, lo que también se traducirá en mayor desempleo y menores salarios.

El ajuste en las empresas productoras de bienes no transables, aquellos que no compiten con productos importados, como lo son los servicios, será de trayectoria distinta, pero fin similar. Estas empresas -que pueden subir sus precios- defenderán inicialmente su rentabilidad subiéndolos. Actuarán así como recaudadoras, siendo los consumidores los que pagarán buena parte del mayor impuesto. A mediano y largo plazo, sin embargo, los menores salarios en el mercado, consecuencia del ajuste descrito en el sector productor de bienes transables, reducirán los salarios en el sector no transable.

Así no cabe duda de que un alza de impuestos desplazará gasto privado, una parte del cual será inversión. Como consecuencia, el país crecerá menos. También es evidente que si esos tributos se desean recolectar mediante mayores impuestos a las empresas -considerando nuestra economía abierta a los flujos de capital-, recaerán mayormente sobre los trabajadores mediante menores salarios o empleo o mayores precios. Es decir, lejos de afectar a los sectores más acomodados, una mayor tributación sobre la renta empeorará aún más la situación de los sectores de menores ingresos.

¿Cómo financiar, entonces, el mayor gasto en educación? Ello se podría hacer impulsando el crecimiento económico, concentrando los recursos del Estado en actividades en donde su labor es insustituible o aumentando la eficiencia en la administración de los programas que ofrece el sector público. En ninguna área lo último es más obvio que en la social, en que el reemplazo de los cientos de programas sociales existentes por un simple impuesto sobre la renta negativo podría ahorrarle al fisco el equivalente de miles de millones de dólares anuales en gastos de administración innecesarios.

Osvaldo Quiroga
Ingeniero civil

Rolf Lüders
Doctor en Economía


Diario El Mercurio, jueves 29 de agosto de 2013


Señor Director:

Con interés he leído la columna de opinión de Rolf Lüders y Osvaldo Quiroga referente a los efectos que tendría un aumento de impuestos a las empresas sobre las inversiones de estas, los salarios reales y la competitividad de una economía abierta.

Al respecto quiero señalar que lo expresado es cierto para una economía abierta en general. Sin embargo, es menos válido para el caso chileno, dada la integración del sistema tributario nacional entre empresas y personas. En efecto, los impuestos que pagan las empresas son de retención a los impuestos finales que pagan las personas. Este no es el caso en EE.UU., lugar de donde provienen los modelos académicos para concluir lo señalado en la columna. El autor de esta hipótesis es Arnold Harberger, con quien personalmente cotejé este razonamiento.

Ahora bien, si combinamos un alza de impuesto de primera categoría con la eliminación del FUT, el análisis de Lüders y Quiroga cobra plena validez.

Paul Fontaine B.


Diario El Mercurio, viernes 30 de agosto de 2013

Señor Director:

A los comentarios de Paul Fontaine solo puedo acotar que un "evaluador de proyectos bien entrenado" capturará en su análisis que cuando se suben los impuestos, como sea que se haga, el Estado confisca una parte mayor de los flujos futuros del inversionista.

Coincido con él en cuanto a que en el caso de la propuesta de Bachelet de subir el impuesto de primera categoría y eliminar el FUT, el razonamiento es indiscutible. Así, aun un "evaluador de proyectos junior" registrará la menor rentabilidad.

De este modo, todos los proyectos reevaluados tras el alza de impuestos mostrarán una rentabilidad significativamente menor, y muchos se descartarán por ser esta menor que la ofrecida en los mercados internacionales.

Es muy importante, y no discutido, que esos mayores impuestos, lejos de afectar a los sectores más acomodados, empeorarían la situación de las familias de menores ingresos, que pagarían mayores precios, tendrían menos opciones de empleo y recibirían menores remuneraciones por la menor demanda por trabajo.

Osvaldo Quiroga

Esclavos de la consigna. Mala memoria y a la vez ni perdón ni olvido. ¿Aprenderemos alguna vez?‏



Año Electoral 2013
Diario El Mercurio, Viernes 30 de agosto de 2013

Mayorías y minorías

"Me da la impresión, como se decía en Francia en los tiempos de Stendhal, de que ahora, después de cuarenta años, y salvo excepciones, no hemos sabido aprender nada ni olvidar nada"...

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Jorge Edwards
Los tiempos cambian, las ideologías envejecen y se transforman, las modas pasan de moda, pero la historia, a pesar de todo, tiende a repetirse. Se repite con otros matices, desde otras perspectivas. Desde Francia, desde Europa, observamos los sucesos del norte de África o del Medio Oriente, los de Siria, Irán, Egipto, Israel, con una mirada más cercana, más experimentada, y por lo mismo más compleja. No es posible quedarse callado frente a la violencia, al crimen, a los tiroteos callejeros seguidos de decenas de muertos, pero la mirada nunca es tan simple. Se hace la crítica del gobierno de Mursi, en Egipto; los errores serios cometidos en no más de un año, el intento de los Hermanos Musulmanes de islamizar el país a marchas forzadas, pero ¿cómo aprobar a un régimen que aplica una fuerza militar desproporcionada?

Chile, hace cuarenta años, estaba muy lejos del centro del mundo, más lejos que ahora, y no tenía la menor importancia estratégica. En apariencia, por lo menos. Y la Guerra Fría tenía una virulencia que nosotros, desde nuestra orilla, no alcanzábamos a captar bien. Pero frente a las crisis de Siria o de Egipto, y en la Europa de hoy, las cosas se ven de otra manera. Existe una repugnancia europea, civilizada, humanista, frente al crimen político, sobre todo cuando está dirigido contra ciudadanos del propio país, pero a la vez hay una visión aguda, lúcida, de los males menores frente a los posibles y probables males mayores. Es decir, hay una conciencia histórica que interviene, que modifica las reacciones iniciales, que tiene consecuencias dignas de Hamlet. "De este modo -como decía Hamlet-, la conciencia nos hace cobardes a todos".

No entro en los temas oficiales, de gobierno, pero leo con gran interés las declaraciones de los ciudadanos de a pie, sobre todo las que provienen de Egipto en estos días. Hay partidarios apasionados del presidente depuesto y seguidores no menos apasionados de los militares. Todo parecería indicar que hay una guerra civil en marcha. La prensa anglosajona, pragmática, directa, de un estilo narrativo reconocible, tiende a darle espacio a testimonios variados, anónimos, de personajes modestos. Escucho a personas de sectores populares de la ciudad de El Cairo, un comerciante en pequeña escala, un transportista, un obrero de la construcción, y sostienen que los Hermanos Musulmanes se infiltraban por todas partes y trataban de imponer su estilo religioso de vida a todo el mundo. Por eso atacaban con furia a los coptos, a los descendientes de los primeros cristianos, que se encuentran en esas tierras desde siglos antes de que el gobierno elegido en las urnas fuera depuesto. Los seguidores de Mursi, por su lado, utilizan el lenguaje clásico de la condena a un golpe de fuerza, ilegítimo, contra un gobierno democrático. Era un gobierno elegido, claro está, pero ¿era, y se proponía seguir siendo, una democracia normal, tolerante de la diversidad de opiniones y de opciones religiosas?

Por mi parte, llego una vez más a una conclusión a la que había llegado hace décadas, y que se relaciona con la naturaleza misma de la democracia. La democracia representativa, surgida de elecciones populares, asume las tendencias y los intereses de la mayoría. Pero esa legitimidad de origen no da facultades para destruir a la minoría, y menos si esa minoría corresponde aproximadamente a una de las mitades del país. Los derechos de las minorías, en buenas cuentas, no son menos importantes en una democracia que los de las mayorías. En un país como Egipto, los sucesos revelan que esa noción no existía, así como no había una noción clara de la separación entre el Estado y los movimientos religiosos de una u otra tendencia.

En el Chile de hace cuatro décadas, el problema no tenía ingredientes religiosos, pero reflejaba una ideología que ya empezaba a quedar superada por los hechos. No se producía en el mundo moderno una pauperización general y una agudización de los conflictos internos de la sociedad, como había profetizado Carlos Marx, sino un crecimiento progresivo de las clases medias y una mejora de los derechos de la clase obrera en las sociedades avanzadas.

Me parece que fue una situación no entendida ni por la izquierda ni por los militares y sus adeptos de derecha. No se podía admitir una política confiscatoria, de tono puramente populista, desde la izquierda, ni una represión desbocada, descaradamente autoritaria, desde el otro lado. Había voces solitarias en ambos extremos, pero no predominaron y probablemente no podían predominar. Ahora habría que actuar a partir de un análisis equilibrado, razonable, enteramente honesto y humano, de las cosas que pasaron.

La idea de cambiar de Constitución a toda costa, por ejemplo, me parece apresurada, incluso atragantada. Se puede cambiar una Constitución, desde luego, pero siguiendo las normas jurídicas fundamentales y teniendo en cuenta a las minorías. Pero a veces, por desgracia, cuando escucho el debate actual, pienso que hemos asimilado poco las enseñanzas del pasado nuestro. Me da la impresión, como se decía en Francia en los tiempos de Stendhal, de que ahora, después de cuarenta años, y salvo excepciones, no hemos sabido aprender nada ni olvidar nada.

Jorge Edwards
Escritor, embajador de Chile en Francia, y Académico de Número de la Academia Chilena de la Lengua

Dark energy

A problem of cosmic proportions

Three experiments are starting to study dark energy, the most abundant stuff in the universe. But a theory has just been published purporting to show it does not exist

The Economist, Aug 24th 2013 |From the print editionhttp://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21583972-three-experiments-are-starting-study-dark-energy-most-abundant-stuff
IN THE 1920s astronomers realised that the universe was running away from them. The farther off a galaxy was, the faster it retreated. Logically, this implied everything had once been in one place. That discovery, which led to the Big Bang theory, was the start of modern cosmology.
In 1998, however, a new generation of astronomers discovered that not only is the universe expanding, it is doing so at an ever faster clip. No one knows what is causing this accelerating expansion, but whatever it is has been given a name. It is known as dark energy, and even though its nature is mysterious, its effect is such that its quantity can be calculated. As far as can be determined, it makes up two-thirds of the mass (and therefore, E being equal to mc2, two-thirds of the energy) in the universe. It is thus, literally, a big deal. If you do not understand dark energy, you cannot truly understand reality.
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Cosmologists are therefore keen to lighten their darkness about dark energy, and three new experiments—two based in Chile and the third in Hawaii—should help them do so. These experiments will look back almost to the beginning of the universe, and will measure the relationships between galaxies, and clusters of galaxies, in unprecedented detail. When they are done, though the nature of dark energy may remain unresolved, it should at least be clearer.
If, that is, it actually exists. For a core of cosmological refuseniks still do not believe in it. They do not deny the observations that led others to hypothesise dark energy, but they do deny the conclusion. For them, then, these experiments provide an opportunity to test alternative theories.
Darkness and dawn
The most advanced of the new experiments is the five-tonne, 570-megapixel Dark Energy Camera, which was installed last year at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, 2,200 metres (7,200 feet) above sea level in the Atacama Desert. It is expected to open for business in a few weeks’ time, taking 400 one-gigabyte pictures of the sky each night, for 525 nights over five years.
This photographic marathon is part of the Dark Energy Survey (DES), a project led by Joshua Frieman of the University of Chicago. Dr Frieman’s plan is to scan an eighth of the sky, examining 100,000 galaxy clusters as he does so and measuring the distances to 300m individual galaxies within those clusters.
The reason for all this effort is that tracing the way the sizes and shapes of galactic clusters change over time allows each round of the battle between gravity and dark energy to be studied in detail. Gravity, which tends to slow down the expansion of the universe, causes clusters to become more compact. Dark energy, which tends to speed universal expansion up, causes clusters to spread out. The rate of contraction or expansion of clusters shows the relative strengths of the two forces. Dr Frieman and his colleagues cannot follow the changes in any given cluster since they see only a snapshot of its history. But looking at the differences between lots of clusters of various ages is the next best thing.
Previous observations have suggested that for more than half of the universe’s 13.7-billion-year life, gravity had the upper hand. Only about 6 billion years ago did dark energy overtake it. The DES hopes in particular to study the transitional period, by peering back as far as 10 billion years by the simple expedient of looking at clusters up to 10 billion light-years away.
The second of the new experiments, the Subaru Measurement of Images and Redshifts (SuMIRe), led by Hitoshi Murayama of the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe, in Tokyo, is based on a mountain top in Hawaii. It will start collecting data next year, in a manner similar to the Dark Energy Camera, but better. Though it will look at only a tenth of the sky, rather than an eighth, it can see farther—13 billion light-years, rather than 10 billion. It also has more bells and whistles than the Dark Energy Camera; specifically, it has an integral spectrograph, for working out redshifts.
Redshifts are one of astronomy’s most important sources of information. They tell you how far away a galaxy is. They are caused by the Doppler effect, a phenomenon familiar on Earth as the change in pitch of a police-car or ambulance siren as the vehicle approaches and then recedes. Light, too, is subject to Doppler shifts, and the light from a receding object is thus redder (ie, of longer wavelength) than it otherwise would be. The faster the object is moving away, the redder it is. It was this that allowed those 1920s astronomers, led by Edwin Hubble, to work out that the universe is expanding. The Dark Energy Camera, which lacks a spectrograph, has to rely on other telescopes which do have them to make its redshift measurements for it. Having an integral spectrograph will thus give SuMIRe an advantage.
The third experiment, ACTPol (Atacama Cosmology Telescope Polarisation sensitive receiver), run by Lyman Page of Princeton University, is rather different. Instead of looking at light from galaxies, it will study microwaves from the cosmic microwave background (CMB). This was created around 380,000 years after the Big Bang, and thus preserves an imprint of what the early universe looked like.
ACTPol, too, is in Chile, on the peak of a mountain called Cerro Toco. Tests began on July 19th. Its purpose is to look at the CMB’s polarisation, any part of which will have been distorted in meaningful ways by the microwaves’ passage through intervening galaxies from their creation to their arrival on Earth. And from that, using a lot of statistical jiggery-pokery, a third estimate of the yo-yo effect of gravity and dark matter on galactic clusters should emerge.
If these three experiments work, and agree with one another, it will be a big step forward in understanding how the universe has evolved from an object smaller than an electron into the vastness seen today. Theoreticians will be able to plug the new data into their models of dark energy, and see what comes out. But others will be able to use the data too. And they may come to different conclusions.
Crazy enough to be correct?
Even as astronomers vie to explain the mystery of the expanding universe, some theorists are trying to explain it away. The most recent such attempt has just been published by Christof Wetterich, of the University of Heidelberg, in Germany. Not only does he not believe in dark energy, he does not believe the universe is expanding at all.
That, in the context of modern cosmology, is a pretty grave heresy. But Dr Wetterich’s latest paper, published on arXiv, an online repository, attempts to back it up.
In Dr Wetterich’s picture of the cosmos the redshift others attribute to expansion is, rather, the result of the universe putting on weight. If atoms weighed less in the past, he reasons, the light they emitted then would, in keeping with the laws of quantum mechanics, have been less energetic than the light they emit now. Since less energetic light has a longer wavelength, astronomers looking at it today would perceive it to be redshifted.
At first blush this sounds nuts. The idea that mass is constant is drilled into every budding high-school physicist. Abandoning it would hurt. But in exchange, Dr Wetterich’s proposal deals neatly with a big niggle in the Big Bang theory, namely coping with the point of infinite density at the beginning, called a singularity, which orthodox theories cannot explain.
Dr Wetterich’s model does not—yet—explain the shifts in the shapes of galactic clusters that the Dark Energy Camera, SuMIRe and ACTPol are seeking to clarify. But perhaps, one day, it could. Dr Wetterich is a well-respected physicist and his maths are not obviously wrong. Moreover, his theory does allow for a short period of rapid expansion, known as inflation, whose traces have already been seen in the CMB. Dr Wetterich, however, thinks this inflation did not happen just after the beginning of the universe (the consensus view), for he believes the universe had no beginning. Instead, a small static universe which had always existed turned into a large static one that always will exist—getting heavier and heavier as it does so. There was thus no singularity.
Probably, this theory is wrong. As Cliff Burgess of Perimeter Institute, a Canadian theoretical-physics centre, puts it, “The dark energy business very easily degenerates into something like a crowd of people who are each claiming to be Napoleon while asserting that all the other pretenders are clearly nutty.” But theories last only as long as they do not conflict with the data, and when the new experiments have finished there will be a lot more data for them to conflict with, and thus reveal who the real Napoleon actually is. Perhaps, therefore, the last word should go to Niels Bohr, one of the founders of quantum theory. He once said to a colleague, Wolfgang Pauli, “We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question that divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct.”



Seamus Heaney

 Poets themselves are finders and keepers, 
that their vocation is to look after art and life 
by being discoverers and custodians of the unlooked for.


1939–2013
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/seamus-heaney
Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney is widely recognized as one of the major poets of the 20th century. A native of Northern Ireland, Heaney was raised in County Derry, and later lived for many years in Dublin. He was the author of over 20 volumes of poetry and criticism, and edited several widely used anthologies. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995 "for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past." Heaney taught at Harvard University (1985-2006) and served as the Oxford Professor of Poetry (1989-1994). He died in 2013.

Heaney has attracted a readership on several continents and has won prestigious literary awards and honors, including the Nobel Prize. As Blake Morrison noted in his work Seamus Heaney, the author is "that rare thing, a poet rated highly by critics and academics yet popular with 'the common reader.'" Part of Heaney's popularity stems from his subject matter—modern Northern Ireland, its farms and cities beset with civil strife, its natural culture and language overrun by English rule. The New York Review of Books essayist Richard Murphy described Heaney as "the poet who has shown the finest art in presenting a coherent vision of Ireland, past and present." Heaney's poetry is known for its aural beauty and finely-wrought textures. Often described as a regional poet, he is also a traditionalist who deliberately gestures back towards the “pre-modern” worlds of William Wordsworth and John Clare.
Heaney was born and raised in Castledawson, County Derry, Northern Ireland. The impact of his surroundings and the details of his upbringing on his work are immense. As a Catholic in Protestant Northern Ireland, Heaney once described himself in the New York Times Book Review as someone who "emerged from a hidden, a buried life and entered the realm of education." Eventually studying English at Queen’s University, Heaney was especially moved by artists who created poetry out of their local and native backgrounds—authors such as Ted HughesPatrick Kavanagh, and Robert Frost. Recalling his time in Belfast, Heaney once noted: "I learned that my local County Derry [childhood] experience, which I had considered archaic and irrelevant to 'the modern world' was to be trusted. They taught me that trust and helped me to articulate it." Heaney’s work has always been most concerned with the past, even his earliest poems of the 1960s. According to Morrison, a "general spirit of reverence toward the past helped Heaney resolve some of his awkwardness about being a writer: he could serve his own community by preserving in literature its customs and crafts, yet simultaneously gain access to a larger community of letters." Indeed, Heaney's earliest poetry collections— Death of a Naturalist (1966) and Door into the Dark (1969)—evoke "a hard, mainly rural life with rare exactness," according to critic and Parnassus contributor Michael Wood. Using descriptions of rural laborers and their tasks and contemplations of natural phenomena—filtered through childhood and adulthood—Heaney "makes you see, hear, smell, taste this life, which in his words is not provincial, but parochial; provincialism hints at the minor or the mediocre, but all parishes, rural or urban, are equal as communities of the human spirit," noted Newsweek correspondent Jack Kroll.

As a poet from Northern Ireland, Heaney used his work to reflect upon the "Troubles," the often-violent political struggles that plagued the country during Heaney’s young adulthood. The poet sought to weave the ongoing Irish troubles into a broader historical frame embracing the general human situation in the booksWintering Out (1973) and North (1975). While some reviewers criticized Heaney for being an apologist and mythologizer, Morrison suggested that Heaney would never reduce political situations to false simple clarity, and never thought his role should be as a political spokesman. The author "has written poems directly about the Troubles as well as elegies for friends and acquaintances who have died in them; he has tried to discover a historical framework in which to interpret the current unrest; and he has taken on the mantle of public spokesman, someone looked to for comment and guidance," noted Morrison. "Yet he has also shown signs of deeply resenting this role, defending the right of poets to be private and apolitical, and questioning the extent to which poetry, however 'committed,' can influence the course of history." In the New Boston Review, Shaun O'Connell contended that even Heaney's most overtly political poems contain depths that subtly alter their meanings. "Those who see Seamus Heaney as a symbol of hope in a troubled land are not, of course, wrong to do so," O'Connell stated, "though they may be missing much of the undercutting complexities of his poetry, the backwash of ironies which make him as bleak as he is bright."

Heaney’s first foray into the world of translation began with the Irish lyric poemBuile Suibhne. The work concerns an ancient king who, cursed by the church, is transformed into a mad bird-man and forced to wander in the harsh and inhospitable countryside. Heaney's translation of the epic was published as Sweeney Astray: A Version from the Irish (1984). New York Times Book Review contributor Brendan Kennelly deemed the poem "a balanced statement about a tragically unbalanced mind. One feels that this balance, urbanely sustained, is the product of a long, imaginative bond between Mr. Heaney and Sweeney." This bond is extended into Heaney's 1984 volume Station Island, where a series of poems titled "Sweeney Redivivus" take up Sweeney's voice once more. The poems reflect one of the book’s larger themes, the connections between personal choices, dramas and losses and larger, more universal forces such as history and language. In The Haw Lantern(1987)Heaney extends many of these preoccupations. W.S. DiPiero described Heaney's focus: "Whatever the occasion—childhood, farm life, politics and culture in Northern Ireland, other poets past and present—Heaney strikes time and again at the taproot of language, examining its genetic structures, trying to discover how it has served, in all its changes, as a culture bearer, a world to contain imaginations, at once a rhetorical weapon and nutriment of spirit. He writes of these matters with rare discrimination and resourcefulness, and a winning impatience with received wisdom."

With the publication of Selected Poems, 1966-1987 (1990) Heaney marked the beginning of a new direction in his career. Poetry contributor William Logancommented of this new direction, "The younger Heaney wrote like a man possessed by demons, even when those demons were very literary demons; the older Heaney seems to wonder, bemusedly, what sort of demon he has become himself." In Seeing Things (1991) Heaney demonstrates even more clearly this shift in perspective. Jefferson Hunter, reviewing the book for the Virginia Quarterly Review, maintained that collection takes a more spiritual, less concrete approach. "Words like 'spirit' and 'pure'… have never figured largely in Heaney's poetry," Hunter explained. However, in Seeing Things Heaney uses such words to "create a new distanced perspective and indeed a new mood" in which "'things beyond measure' or 'things in the offing' or 'the longed-for' can sometimes be sensed, if never directly seen." The Spirit Level (1996) continues to explore humanism, politics and nature.

Always respectfully received, Heaney’s later work, including his second collected poems, Opened Ground: Selected Poems, 1966-1996 (1998), has been lavishly praised. Reviewing Opened Ground for the New York Times Book Review, Edward Mendelson commented that the volume “eloquently confirms [Heaney’s] status as the most skillful and profound poet writing in English today." With Electric Light(2001), Heaney broadened his range of allusion and reference to Homer and Virgil, while continuing to make significant use of memory, elegy and the pastoral tradition. According to John Taylor in Poetry, Heaney "notably attempts, as an aging man, to re-experience childhood and early-adulthood perceptions in all their sensate fullness." Paul Mariani in America found Electric Light "a Janus-faced book, elegiac" and "heartbreaking even." Mariani noted in particular Heaney's frequent elegies to other poets and artists, and called Heaney "one of the handful writing today who has mastered that form as well."
Heaney’s next volume District and Circle (2006) won the T.S. Eliot Prize, the most prestigious poetry award in the UK. Commenting on the volume for the New York Times, critic Brad Leithauser found it remarkably consistent with the rest of Heaney’s oeuvre. But while Heaney’s career may demonstrate an “of-a-pieceness” not common in poetry, Leithauser found that Heaney’s voice still “carries the authenticity and believability of the plainspoken—even though (herein his magic) his words are anything but plainspoken. His stanzas are dense echo chambers of contending nuances and ricocheting sounds. And his is the gift of saying something extraordinary while, line by line, conveying a sense that this is something an ordinary person might actually say.”
Heaney’s prose constitutes an important part of his work. Heaney often used prose to address concerns taken up obliquely in his poetry. In The Redress of Poetry (1995),according to James Longenbach in the Nation, "Heaney wants to think of poetry not only as something that intervenes in the world, redressing or correcting imbalances, but also as something that must be redressed—re-established, celebrated as itself." The book contains a selection of lectures the poet delivered at Oxford University as Professor of Poetry. Heaney's Finders Keepers: Selected Prose, 1971-2001 (2002) earned the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism, the largest annual prize for literary criticism in the English language. John Carey in the London Sunday Timesproposed that Heaney's "is not just another book of literary criticism…It is a record of Seamus Heaney's thirty-year struggle with the demon of doubt. The questions that afflict him are basic. What is the good of poetry? How can it contribute to society? Is it worth the dedication it demands?" Heaney himself described his essays as "testimonies to the fact that poets themselves are finders and keepers, that their vocation is to look after art and life by being discoverers and custodians of the unlooked for."

As a translator, Heaney’s most famous work is the translation of the epic Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf (2000). Considered groundbreaking because of the freedom he took in using modern language, the book is largely credited with revitalizing what had become something of a tired chestnut in the literary world. Malcolm Jones inNewsweek stated: "Heaney's own poetic vernacular—muscular language so rich with the tones and smell of earth that you almost expect to find a few crumbs of dirt clinging to his lines—is the perfect match for the Beowulf poet's Anglo-Saxon…As retooled by Heaney, Beowulf should easily be good for another millennium." Though he has also translated Sophocles, Heaney remains most adept with medieval works. He translated Robert Henryson’s Middle Scots classic and follow-up to Chaucer, The Testament of Cresseid and Seven Fables in 2009.
In 2009, Seamus Heaney turned 70. A true event in the poetry world, Ireland marked the occasion with a 12-hour broadcast of archived Heaney recordings. It was also announced that two-thirds of the poetry collections sold in the UK the previous year had been Heaney titles. Such popularity was almost unheard of in the world of contemporary poetry, and yet Heaney’s voice is unabashedly grounded in tradition. Heaney’s belief in the power of art and poetry, regardless of technological change or economic collapse, offers hope in the face of an increasingly uncertain future. Asked about the value of poetry in times of crisis, Heaney answered it is precisely at such moments that people realize they need more to live than economics: “If poetry and the arts do anything,” he said, “they can fortify your inner life, your inwardness."

BIBLIOGRAPHY

POETRY
  • Death of a Naturalist, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1966.
  • Door into the Dark, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1969.
  • Wintering Out, Faber (London), 1972, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1973.
  • North, Faber, 1975, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1976.
  • Field Work, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1979.
  • Poems: 1965-1975, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1980.
  • (Adapter) Sweeney Astray: A Version from the Irish, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1984, revised edition, with photographs by Rachel Giese, published as Sweeney's Flight, 1992.
  • Station Island, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1984.
  • The Haw Lantern, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1987.
  • New and Selected Poems, 1969-1987, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1990, revised edition published asSelected Poems, 1966-1987, 1991.
  • Seeing Things: Poems, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1991.
  • The Midnight Verdict, Gallery Books (Old Castle, County Meath, Ireland), 1993.
  • The Spirit Level, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1996.
  • Opened Ground: Selected Poems, 1966-1996, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1998.
  • Electric Light, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 2001.
  • District and Circle, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 2006.
Contributor to 101 Poems Against War, edited by Matthew Hollis and Paul Keegan, Faber and Faber (London, England), 2003.
POETRY CHAPBOOKS

  • Eleven Poems, Festival Publications (Belfast, Northern Ireland), 1965.
  • (With David Hammond and Michael Longley) Room to Rhyme, Arts Council of Northern Ireland, 1968.
  • A Lough Neagh Sequence, edited by Harry Chambers and Eric J. Morten, Phoenix Pamphlets Poets Press (Manchester, England), 1969.
  • Boy Driving His Father to Confession, Sceptre Press (Surrey, England), 1970.
  • Night Drive: Poems, Richard Gilbertson (Devon, England), 1970.
  • Land, Poem-of-the-Month Club, 1971.
  • Servant Boy, Red Hanrahan Press (Detroit, MI), 1971.
  • Stations, Ulsterman Publications (Belfast, Northern Ireland), 1975.
  • Bog Poems, Rainbow Press (London, England), 1975.
  • (With Derek Mahon) In Their Element, Arts Council of Northern Ireland, 1977.
  • After Summer, Deerfield Press, 1978.
  • Hedge School: Sonnets from Glanmore, Charles Seluzicki (Portland,OR), 1979.
  • Sweeney Praises the Trees, [New York, NY], 1981.
PROSE
  • The Fire i' the Flint: Reflections on the Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1975.
  • Robert Lowell: A Memorial Address and Elegy, Faber (London, England), 1978.
  • Preoccupations: Selected Prose, 1968-1978, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1980.
  • The Government of the Tongue: Selected Prose, 1978-1987, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1988.
  • The Place of Writing, Scholars Press, 1989.
  • The Redress of Poetry, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1995.
  • Crediting Poetry: The Nobel Lecture, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1996.
  • Finders Keepers: Selected Prose, 1971-2001, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 2002.
  • (With Dennis O'Driscoll) Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney, Farrar Straus (New York, NY), 2008. 
EDITOR
  • (With Alan Brownjohn) New Poems: 1970-1971, Hutchinson (London, England), 1971.
  • Soundings: An Annual Anthology of New Irish Poetry, Blackstaff Press (Belfast, Northern Ireland), 1972.
  • Soundings II, Blackstaff Press (Belfast, Northern Ireland), 1974.
  • (With Ted Hughes) The Rattle Bag: An Anthology of Poetry (juvenile), Faber (London, England), 1982.
  • The Essential Wordsworth, Ecco Press (New York, NY), 1988.
  • (With Rebecca JamesMiles GrahamRaphael Lyne) The May Anthology of Oxford and Cambridge Poetry(Varsity/Cherwell, Oxford, England), 1993.
  • (With Ted Hughes) The School Bag, Faber (London, England), 1997.
  • Yeats, ( "Poet to Poet series"), Faber (London, England), 2000.

OTHER
  • (With John Montague) The Northern Muse (sound recording), Claddagh Records, 1969.
  • The Cure at Troy: A Version of Sophocles' "Philoctetes" (drama; produced by Yale Repertory Theater, 1997, produced in Oxford, England, 1999), Farrar, Straus, 1991.
  • (Translator, with Stanislaw Baranczak) Laments, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1995.
  • (With Joseph Brodsky and Derek Walcott) Homage to Frost, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1996.
  • (Translator) Beowulf: A New Verse Translation, Farrar, Straus, 2000.
  • (Translator) Leos Janacek, Diary of One Who Vanished: A Song Cycle, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 2000.
  • (Author of introduction) Darcy O'Brien, A Way of Life, Like Any Other, New York Review Books, 2001.
  • (Translator) Sorley McLean, Hallaig, 2002.
  • (Translator) The Midnight Verdict (collection), Dufour, 2002.
  • (Author of introduction) David Thomson, The People of the Sea: A Journey in Search of the Seal Legend,Counterpoint, 2002.
  • (With Liam O'Flynn) The Poet and the Piper (audio), Claddagh Records, 2003.
  • (Author of introduction) Thomas Flanagan, There You Are: Writing on Irish and American Literature and History, edited by Christopher Cahill, New York Review Books, 2003.
  • (Translator) The Burial at Thebes: A Version of Sophocles' "Antigone," Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 2004.
  • (Translator) The Testament of Cresseid, Enitharmon Press, 2004.
  • (Translator) Columcille the Scribe, The Royal Irish Academy, 2004.
  • (Translator) The Testament of Cresseid and Seven Fables, Faber and Faber, 2009.
Contributor to books, including The Writers: A Sense of Ireland, O'Brien Press (Dublin, Ireland), 1979; Canopy: A Work for Voice and Light in Harvard Yard, Harvard University Art Museums, 1997; Healing Power: The Epic Poise—A Celebration of Ted Hughes, edited by Nick Gammage, Faber, 1999; For the Love of Ireland: A Literary Companion for Readers and Travelers, Ballantine, 2001; 101 Poems against War, edited by Matthew Hollis and Paul Keegan, Faber, 2003; and Don't Ask Me What I Mean: Poets in Their Own Words, Picador, 2003. Contributor of poetry and essays to periodicals, including New Statesman, Listener, Guardian, Times Literary Supplement,and London Review of Books. Heaney's papers and letters are collected at Emory University, Atlanta, GA.

FURTHER READING


FURTHER READINGS ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

BOOKS

  • Allen, Michael, editor. Seamus Heaney, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1997.
  • Andrews, Elmer, editor, The Poetry of Seamus Heaney: Essays, Articles, Reviews, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 2000.
  • Beckett, Sandra L., editor, Transcending Boundaries: Writing for a Dual Audience of Children and Adults,Garland (New York, NY), 1999.
  • Bemporad, J., Seamus Heaney: Life and Works, Books Inc. (London, England) 1999.
  • Booth, James, editor, New Larkins for the Old: Critical Essays, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2000.
  • Brown, Terence, Northern Voices: Poets from Ulster, Rowman & Littlefield (Totowa, NJ), 1975.
  • Burris, Sydney, The Poetry of Resistance, Ohio University Press (Athens, OH), 1990.
  • Buttel, Robert, Seamus Heaney, Bucknell University Press (Cranbury, NJ), 1975.
  • Concise Dictionary of British Literary Biography: Contemporary Writers, 1960 to the Present, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1992.
  • Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 5, 1976, Volume 7, 1977, Volume 14, 1980, Volume 25, 1983, Volume 37, 1986, Volume 74, 1993, Volume 91, 1996.
  • Corcoran, Neil,The Poetry of Seamus Heaney: A Critical Study, Faber (London, England), 1998.
  • Curtis, Tony, editor, The Art of Seamus Heaney, Wolfhound Press (Dublin, Ireland), 1994.
  • Deane, Seamus, Strange Country: Modernity and Nationhood in Irish Writing since 1790, Clarendon Press (Oxford, England), 1997.
  • Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 40: Poets of Great Britain and Ireland since 1960, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1985.
  • Duffy, Edna, The Subaltern Ulysses, University of Minnesota Press, 1994.
  • Durkan, Michael J., Seamus Heaney: A Reference Guide, G. K. Hall (New York, NY), 1996.
  • Fenton, James, The Strength of Poetry?, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2001.
  • Garratt, Robert F., Critical Essays on Seamus Heaney, G. K. Hall (New York, NY), 1995.
  • Goodby, John, Irish Poetry since 1950: From Stillness into History, University Press (Manchester, England), 2000.
  • Harmon, Maurice, editor, Image and Illusion: Anglo-Irish Literature and Its Contexts, Wolfhound Press, 1979.
  • Hensen, Michael, and Annette Pankratz, editors, The Aesthetics and Pragmatics of Violence, Stutz (Passau, Germany), 2001.
  • Kerridge, Richard, and Neil Samuels, editors, Writing the Environment: Ecocriticism and Literature, Zed (London, England), 1998.
  • Kiberd, Declan, Inventing Ireland: The Literature of the Modern Nation, J. Cape (London, England), 1995.
  • Kirkland, Richard, Literature and Culture in Northern Ireland since 1965: Moments of Danger, Longman (London, England), 1996.
  • Kirkpatrick, Kathryn. Border Crossings: Irish Women Writers and National Identities, University of Alabama Press (Tuscaloosa, AL), 2000.
  • Longley, Edna, Poetry in the Wars, Bloodaxe (Newcastle on Tyne, England), 1986.
  • Mahoney, John L., editor,Seeing into the Life of Things: Essays on Literature and Religious Experience, Fordham University Press (New York, NY), 1998.
  • Malloy, Catharine, and Phyllis Carey, editors, Seamus Heaney—The Shaping Spirit, University of Delaware Press (Newark, NJ), 1996.
  • McGuinness, Arthur E., Seamus Heaney: Poet and Critic, P. Lang (New York, NY), 1994.
  • Molino, Michael R., Questioning Tradition, Language, and Myth: The Poetry of Seamus Heaney, Catholic University of America Press (New York, NY), 1994.
  • Morrison, Blake, Seamus Heaney, Methuen (London, England), 1982.
  • O'Brien, Eugene, Seamus Heaney and the Place of Writing, Florida University Press (Gainesville, FL), 2002.
  • O'Brien, Eugene, Seamus Heaney: Creating Ireland of the Mind, Liffey Press (Dublin, Ireland), 2003.
  • Parini, Jay, editor, British Writers: Retrospective Supplement I, Scribner (New York, NY), 2002.
  • Roberts, Neil, editor, A Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry, Blackwell (Oxford, England), 2001.
  • Scott, Jamie S., and Paul Simpson-Housley, editors, Mapping the Sacred: Religion, Geography, and Postcolonial Literatures, Rodopi (Amsterdam, Netherlands), 2001.
  • Stewart, Bruce, editor, That Other World, Smythe (Gerrards Cross, England), 1998.
  • Thomas, Harry, editor, Talking with Poets, Handsel (New York, NY), 2002.
  • Tobin, Daniel, Passage to the Center: Imagination and the Sacred in the Poetry of Seamus Heaney, University Press of Kentucky (Lexington, KY), 1999.
  • Vendler, Helen, Seamus Heaney, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1998.
  • Viewpoints: Poets in Conversation with John Haffenden, Faber (London, England), 1981.
  • Welch, Robert, Changing States: Transformations in Modern Irish Writing, Routledge (London, England), 1993.
  • Wills, Clair, Improprieties: Politics and Sexuality in Northern Irish Poetry, Oxford University Press (Oxford, England), 1993.

PERIODICALS

  • America, August 3, 1996, p. 24; March 29, 1997, p. 10; October 11, 1997, p. 8; December 20, 1997, p. 24; July 31, 1999, John F. Desmond, "Measures of a Poet," p. 24; July 31, 1999, p. 24; April 23, 2001, p. 25.
  • American Scholar, autumn, 1981.
  • Antioch Review, spring, 1993; spring, 1999, p. 246.
  • Ariel, October, 1998, p. 7.
  • Atlantis, June, 2001, p. 7.
  • Back Stage, December 19, 1997, review of The Cure at Troy: A Version of Sophocles' "Philoctetes," p. 34.
  • Booklist, May 1, 1996, p. 1485; October 15, 1998, review of "Opened Ground," p. 388; February 15, 2000, Ray Olson, "A New Verse Translation," p. 1073; March 15, 2001, p. 1346; May 1, 2002, p. 1499.
  • Books for Keeps, September, 1997, p. 30.
  • Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, July, 1998, p. 51; December, 1998, p. 63.
  • Christian Scholar's Review, fall, 2001, p. 59.
  • Christian Science Monitor, April 22, 1999, Elizabeth Lund, "The Enticing Sounds of This Irishman's Verse," p. 20; February 3, 2000, "' Harry Potter' Falls to a Medieval Slayer," p. 1; April 13, 2000, p. 15; April 26, 2001, p. 19.
  • Classical and Modern Literature, spring, 1999, p. 243; fall, 2001, p. 71.
  • Commonweal, May 17, 1996, p. 10; November 6, 1998, p. 18; December 1, 2000, p. 22.
  • Contemporary Literature, winter, 1999, p. 627.
  • Contemporary Review, April, 2000, p. 206.
  • Critical Inquiry, spring, 1982.
  • Critical Quarterly, spring, 1974; spring, 1976.
  • Daily Telegraph (London, England), February 19, 2000, p. 116; March 31, 2001; April 13, 2002; May 5, 2003.
  • Dalhousie Review, autumn, 2000, p. 351.
  • Economist, September 12, 1998, review of Opened Ground, p. 14; November 20, 1999, "Translations of the Spirit," p. 101; June 23, 2001, p. 121.
  • Eire-Ireland, summer, 1978; winter, 1980; fall-winter, 2001, p. 7.
  • Encounter, November, 1975.
  • English, summer-autumn, 1997; summer, 1998, p. 111; summer, 2000, p. 143; summer, 2001, p. 149.
  • Essays in Criticism, April, 1998, p. 144.
  • Evening Standard, April 9, 2001, p. 47; April 8, 2002, p. 52.
  • Explicator, fall, 2002, p. 56.
  • Financial Times, March 21, 1998, p. 5; March 24, 2001, p. 4; March 30, 2002, p. 4; September 27, 2003, p. 26.
  • Globe and Mail (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), September 3, 1988.
  • Guardian (London, England), April 3, 1997, p. 9; October 9, 1999, p. 6; October 16, 1999, p. 10; October 18, 1999, p. 17; December 4, 1999, p. 11; January 19, 2000, p. 21; January 29, 2000, p. 3; September 30, 2000, p. 11; March 24, 2001, p. 12; April 7, 2001, p. 8; July 27, 2002, p. 21.
  • Harper's, March, 1981.
  • Harvard Review, fall, 1999, p. 74; fall, 2000, p. 12.
  • Independent (London, England), April 5, 1997, p. 7; December 1, 1997, p. 5; September 5, 1998, p. 17; September 8, 1998, p. 11; April 10, 1999, p. 5; October 2, 1999, p. 10; January 26, 2000, p. 5; January 29, 2000, p. 5; March 31, 2001, p. 10; June 16, 2001, p. 11; December 8, 2001, p. 9; February 19, 2003, p. 5; September 27, 2003, p. 33.
  • Independent on Sunday (London, England), April 6, 1997, p. 29; July 20, 1997, p. 32; November 9, 1997, p. 38; September 6, 1998, p. 10; March 21, 1999, p. 9; April 4, 1999, p. 11; October 10, 1999, p. 10; April 8, 2001, p. 46.
  • Irish Literary Supplement, fall, 1997, p. 14.
  • Irish Studies Review , spring, 1996; December, 2002, p. 303.
  • Irish Times (Dublin, Ireland), February 22, 2003, p. 61; April 12, 2003, p. 62; July 5, 2003, p. 57; July 12, 2003, p. 59; July 19, 2003, p. 55; August 2, 2003, p. 59; October 25, 2003, p. 55.
  • Irish University Review, spring-summer, 1998, pp. 56, 68; autumn-winter, 1999, p. 358.
  • Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies, spring, 2000, p. 51.
  • Journal of Modern Literature, summer, 2000, pp. 471, 597; fall, 2001, p. 1.
  • Jouvert, fall, 1999, p. 40.
  • Kentucky Philological Review, March, 1998, p. 17.
  • Kenyon Review, winter, 2002, p. 160.
  • Kliatt, March, 1998, p. 57.
  • Library Journal, May 15, 1997, review of The Spirit Level, p. 120; September 1, 1997, review of The Spirit Level,p. 235; April 1, 1999, Barbara Hoffert, review of Opened Ground, p. 96; December, 1999, Thomas L. Cooksey, review of Beowulf, p. 132; August, 2000, p. 110; April 1, 2001, p. 104; April 1, 2002, p. 106; June 1, 2002, p. 155.
  • Listener, December 7, 1972; November 8, 1973; September 25, 1975; December 20-27, 1984.
  • Lit, October, 1999, pp. 149, 181.
  • Literature and Theology, March, 2003, p. 32.
  • London Review of Books, November 1-14, 1984; May 27, 1999, review of Opened Ground, p. 20.
  • Los Angeles Times, May 16, 1984; January 5, 1989; December 31, 2000, p. 6; April 22, 2001, p. 3.
  • Los Angeles Times Book Review, March 2, 1980; October 21, 1984; June 2, 1985; October 27, 1987; August 26, 1990; December 27, 1992.
  • Nation, November 10, 1979; December 4, 1995, p. 716; January 4, 1999, Jay Parini, review of Opened Ground,p. 25.
  • New Boston Review, August-September, 1980.
  • New Criterion, May, 2000, p. 31.
  • New Literary History, winter, 1999, p. 239.
  • New Republic, March 27, 1976; December 22, 1979; April 30, 1984; February 18, 1985; January 13, 1997, review of Homage to Robert Frost, p. 14; February 28, 2000, Nicholas Howe, "Scullionspeak," p. 32; February 28, 2000, p. 32.
  • New Statesman, April 25, 1997; September 18, 1998, review of Opened Ground, p. 54; April 15, 2001, p. 53.
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