Seamus Heaney / John Banville (1 Viewer)

[La La]

coming here for the Man Literary Festival, going to see them lecture on different days, one on my birthday!
lookin forward to seeing them speak.

has anyone read The Sea?
i started The Untouchables aaaaaaages ago but only got halfway through.....

 

[ICUH8N]

Yes. They're both great (the books, I mean)

 

[sugar_referee]

the book of evidence is deadly, really funny in places, weird though. Johns a good lad.

 

[egg_]

John is a miserable oul prick, I reckon, though he sure can write. One of his nephews played guitar in a very early version of the band that became Stoat

 

[hermie]

Seamus Heaney's shit though.never liked any of his stuff cept maybe mid-term break when i was in school

 

[oh shit]

seamus heaney - crap library

 

[classic seanc]

I always really liked Heaney. He was in both syllabi for both times I did the leavin, so I got to go through a fair bit of his stuff. I dunno, maybe he doesn't make as much sense to city folk, but some of it really affected me at the time.

 

[La La]

seamus heaney - crap library

a little ambiguous there B, can you explain what you meant?

 

[oh shit]

like a meat market for GAA wankers on pro plus

 

[taubstumm]

the believer did an interview with john banville where he came across as a pretentious eejit.

 

[egg_]

This is by Seamus Heaney, and I think it's deadly:

from Three Drawings

3. A Haul

The one that got away
from Thor and the giant Hymer
was the world-serpent itself.
The god had baited his line

with a ox-head, spun it high
and plunged it into the depths.
But the big haul came to an end
whtn Thor's foot went through the boards

and Hymer panicked and cut
the line with a bait-knife. Then
roll-over, turmoil, whiplash!
A Milky Way in the water.

The hole he smashed in the boat
opened, the way Thor's head
opened out there on the sea.
He felt at one with space,

unroofed and obvious -
suprised in his empty arms
like some fabulous high-catcher
coming down without the ball.

 

[classic seanc]

So I went looking for some Heaney, and I found this. This got me.

http://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/heaney/bogland.html

Bogland

Seamus Heaney


for T. P. Flanagan

We have no prairies To slice a big sun at evening-- Everywhere the eye concedes to Encrouching horizon,

​

Is wooed into the cyclops' eye Of a tarn. Our unfenced country Is bog that keeps crusting Between the sights of the sun.

​

They've taken the skeleton Of the Great Irish Elk Out of the peat, set it up An astounding crate full of air.

​

Butter sunk under More than a hundred years Was recovered salty and white. The ground itself is kind, black butter

​

Melting and opening underfoot, Missing its last definition By millions of years. They'll never dig coal here,

​

Only the waterlogged trunks Of great firs, soft as pulp. Our pioneers keep striking Inwards and downwards,

​

Every layer they strip Seems camped on before. The bogholes might be Atlantic seepage. The wet centre is bottomless.

 

[classic seanc]

the believer did an interview with john banville where he came across as a pretentious eejit.

THE BELIEVER: Do you find that you’re able to like any of your books?
JOHN BANVILLE: No. I hate them all. With a deep, abiding hatred. And embarrassment. I have this fantasy that I’m walking past Brentano’s or wherever and I click my fingers and all my books on the shelves go blank. The covers are still there but all the pages are blank. And then I can start again and get it right. I hate them all. They’re all so far below what I had hoped they would be. And yet one goes on. Here I am starting a new book. This is the absolute best stage of it, because when you’re writing the opening pages of the book, anything is possible, you might actually get it right this time. In my heart, of course I know that I won’t. In a couple of years’ time when I finish the book, I’ll hate it just as much as the others. I won’t deny that every now and then I write a sentence and I can hear a chime, I can hear that ping that you get when you hit your fingernail on the side of a glass, and I think, “Yeah, that’s right.” Why would I sit here day after day doing this stuff? I certainly don’t get any money for it.

That's EXACTLY how I feel about my posts on Thumped.

 

[egg_]

I certainly don’t get any money for it.

My.
Arse.
You.
Whinging.
Prick.