"For twelve long years I've suffered this damned cat.../ though more than once I've threatened violence/ the brick and burlap in the river recompense/ for mounds of furballs littering the house."– "Grimalkin""Grimalkin," Tom Lynch informs me, "is dead." I couldn't help it, I had to know. The cat lasted almost eight years after the poem was written. "I had told Mike [his son] … [Read more...] about Chapter & Hearse
poet
Seamus Heaney Poetic Champion
A native of Northern Ireland, Seamus Heaney won the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature. The following excerpts are taken from interviews conducted with him in 1986 and shortly after he won the Nobel in 1996.Poetry summons you. That's been my own experience. The real difficulty about being a poet is not in the writing. It's surviving the silence, surviving lack of inspiration, and … [Read more...] about Seamus Heaney Poetic Champion
A Memorable Evening with Seamus Heaney
Courtesy of NYU Glucksman Ireland House
On April 13, this Saturday, Seamus Heaney would have been 80 years old. Though he passed away too early, on August 30, 2013, his work lives on. Through the last 25 years of his life, the poet had an ongoing connection with Glucksman Ireland House, the center of Irish Studies at NYU, and its founder Loretta Brennan Glucksman. On April 11, 1996, just six months after winning the … [Read more...] about A Memorable Evening with Seamus Heaney