RIP Seamus Heaney.

[Biff]

Not much of an age. Top bloke.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-23898890

Not sure why the Beeb list it under World-Middle East (in the address bar)

[RJ]

Now here:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-23898891

Famous Seamus, no more 

Heaney was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995 "for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past".

That Nobel citation sums up his work nicely, with just a few more syllables than he would have needed .  I was lucky enough to see him read, a year or two after the publication of Field Work. 

For my money, his work knocks spots off Yeats'.

[Tim Hall]

Bum.

IIRC his Desert Island Discs luxury was a pair of Doctor Marten boots, as he imagined the desert island not as a sandy paradise but more like Iceland, rough and volcanic.

[Julian]

Really sad to hear this.

[Wascally Weasel]

Likewise.  His version of Beowulf is a thing of greatness.

[clarion]

A genius with words.

[Peter]

Very sad.  The ceefax report said something about him being considered as the "greatest IRISH poet since WB Yeats".  I think (like RJ) that he's better than Yeats and that he's the best poet of any nation since that period (of the ones I've read).

No more will he "dig with his pen".

RIP

[Steph]

Speaking as a poet... yeah, it's something else I've had in print... I had/have a number of writers whose way with words has profoundly delighted me while simultaneously leaving me in a state of deep despair over my own fumbling. Some of them were not very nice people, such as Pound, but the others include Auden, MacNeice and Thomas. Heaney was a great favourite of mine, and, as RJ suggests, it was his precision and economy that struck me dumb.

By all accounts, he was a Good Chap, as well. A loss to us all.

[spindrift]

It's a great Seam.

[clarion]

Very sad.  The ceefax report said something about him being considered as the "greatest IRISH poet since WB Yeats".  I think (like RJ) that he's better than Yeats and that he's the best poet of any nation since that period (of the ones I've read).

No more will he "dig with his pen".

RIP

Greater than Yeats without a doubt.  And among the greatest in the world, let alone Ireland.

[RJ]

(OT- @Steph- Dylan, RS, or Edward?)

Some nice tributes, a long obit and a front page photo in today's Grauniad. Time to review my bedside reading stacks.

[Steph]

(OT- @Steph- Dylan, RS, or Edward?)

Some nice tributes, a long obit and a front page photo in today's Grauniad. Time to review my bedside reading stacks.

Dylan, and RS. But mostly Dylan. I found the words that leapt into my mind at the news were about going gladly...

[RJ]

Thinking (only a little) about it, Heaney's style maybe had the very best elements of each Thomas (Dylan's vocabularisation, RS's sparseness, Edward's pastoralism) rolled with many other things into one. Which is maybe another way of saying he was a complete poet.

[Wowbagger]

I thought I'd add a link to my nephew's blog because he, on his long canal boat tour, has some good things to say about Seamus Heaney.

http://nbfelucca.wordpress.com/2013/09/01/a-fruity-homage-to-seamus-heaney-and-my-grandparents/