Past Poetic: Archaeology and the Poetry of W.B. Yeats and Seamus Heaney

by Christine Finn

This book considers the way two Anglo-Irish poets, W.B. Yeats and Seamus Heaney, have used archaeology in their work, and how it surfaced in their lives. As well as providing new insights on Yeats and Heaney, their poetry and its analysis provides a filter for an original reading of the history of archaeology as it emerged from the mid-nineteenth century. Christine Finn draws on an array of data, tracing the path of the poets through museums, their childhood landscapes, and archaeological sites in Ireland, Italy and Scandinavia.Past Poetic reveals the ways in which these two great poets received the past, as images in books and photographs, and as tangible objects.

192 pages, Hardcover

First published March 25, 2004

Reviews

[Ramzzi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just when I thought Yeats was celestial, but here you could also extract from his oeuvre a very material, if not archeological realm. Indeed, James Longenbach was right he had the most beautiful cosmology for a poet. And how celestial also the fate of Heaney being born when Yeats died: it is akin to Galileo being born when Michaelangelo passed away.

This is a very beautiful scholarship, very interdisciplinary, but so cohesive and sound. Illuminating in all corners. I hope Christine Finn will also do another one like this in the future.

[Rolnd · Rating 5 out of 5]

dry as fuck