Literature

The Moment in the Rose-Garden

Hear the Silence

Derek Mahon is not a poet to calm or ease the mind. He keeps us alert, thinking, in flux. It is hard to accept that…

Irish Literature

Into Us to Keep

Seamus Heaney’s Virgil translation was one of a number of posthumous publications, but now it seems there is no more to come. As Auden wrote…

Irish Literature

Not at Rest

The mind of Derek Mahon is not, he assures us, one that can be ‘set at rest’. But would we wish it to be? Would…

Irish Literature

Through to Delight

There is a sense of joy in Derek Mahon’s latest collection, which long-time readers may see as a hard-won peace with a world, and a…

Irish Literature

Head-on and Dead-on

Seamus Heaney’s academic intelligence was formidable but he did not try to write, or think, like a typical academic. His connections to other thinkers often…

Irish Literature

Descent into Darkness

Heaney’s Virgil certainly contains some of the verbal exuberance we associate with him, but some may wonder why there is not more. But Virgil’s Latin…