#143
Title : The Spirit Level
Author: Seamus Heaney
Genre: Poetry (821.914)
Challenges: Read and Review, Support Your Local Library, Give Poetry a Chance, The 2nd
Rating: B+
Published: 1996
Date read: 10/30/11 - 11/17/11

Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and editor of The Essential Wordsworth, poet Seamus Heaney has woven a patchwork of 40 free-style pieces that comprise this small, 82 page volume. Much of his Irish heritage shines through and takes us on a journey to The Gravel Walks where we see ’men in dungarees, like captive shades, mixed concrete’; we sit in the Poet’s Chair and feel ‘the way the air behind them‘s winged and full‘; ‘sailed beyond ourselves’ on The Swing and hear ‘all night behind the corpse house’ A Dog Was Crying Tonight in Wicklow Also. At the Wellhead we meet the sightless Rosie Keenan who ‘let us touch her braille in book’. All our senses become alive when Heaney speaks.