The Government of the Tongue

by Seamus Heaney

Heaney here scrutinizes the work of several poets, British and Irish, American and European, whose work he considers might call into question the rights of poetic utterance. The author asks whether the voice of the poet should be governed, or whether it should be the governor.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction, Ireland, Irish Literature, Literature, Essays, Literary Criticism

Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Works of Irish poet Seamus Justin Heaney reflect landscape, culture, and political crises of his homeland and include the collections Wintering Out (1972) and Field Work (1979) as well as a translation of Beowulf (1999). He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1995.

This writer and lecturer won this prize "for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past."

Heaney on Wikipedia.

Reviews

[Diann Blakely]

While Heaney’s virtuosity as a critic is as well-known and justly admired as his verse, I have a single reservation about this volume, which I first read in 1989, the year of it's publication: “The Indefatigable Hoof-Taps: Sylvia Plath” is marred both by his friendship with Hughes and his own deeply Wordsworthian relationship to nature. The latter renders Heaney unable to see--despite the beautiful elegies for his mother, endearing uxoriousness, and even his typical empathy for women--how frightening primal landscape can appear to the opposite gender. While Plath’s “Mussel Hunter at Rock Harbor” and other poems that indicate a relational, rather than negational, view of the world, pass muster in “The Indefatigable Hooftaps,” Heaney disapproves of Plath’s use of imagery drawn from the Shoah. Many have agreed with his position, including Harold Bloom (See Janet Cameron’s essay “Sylvia Plath’s Use of Holocaust Imagery”--http://janetcameron.suite101.com/sylv... an unevenly written but succinct summation of various points of view on this topic. Fenton’s oft-quoted rejoinder that “a great deal of art is made from the history of other people's sorrows” always remains worth keeping in mind when reading criticisms of Plath that echo Irving Howe’s “A Partial Dissent,” as does the BBC/Peter Orr interview in which Plath discusses her German/Viennese origins.

[Kieran McAndrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of lectures from Séamus Heaney on the writings of other poets. Enlightening and filled with enthusiasm and a reverence for the writers, this academic text should help readers come to a new understanding of the importance of poetry in a changing world.

[Sophie Quinn · Rating 4 out of 5]

interesting. not entirely convinced by the disparity between the discussion of men vs. women poets

[Ghazi Alotaibi · Rating 5 out of 5]

أحاديث الشعر تنال نصيبها من الشعر ولو كانت تحت مسمى محاضرة نقدية.. كتاب في غاية الجمال والقرب من القارئ.

[Paul Cannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant work by one of the giants of literature.

[Toby · Rating 2 out of 5]

Obviously, it's Seamus Heaney, so this collection of lectures and miscellanies is well written and acutely observed. Those who with a far more wide-ranging knowledge of poetry than me will get more out of it. Zbigniew Herbert and Czeslaw Milosc make a number of appearances which will add some context to their entries in The Rattle Bag and The School Bag. Mandelstam also turns up quite a lot. I found (because I'm familiar with it) Heaney's discussion of Elizabeth Bishop's The Fish Houses most enlightening. Robert Lowell (of whom, I've read nothing) less so.

[Nasar · Rating 5 out of 5]

On the one hand, poetry could be regarded as magical incantation, fundamentally a matter of sound and the power of sound to bind our minds’ and bodies’ apprehensions within an acoustic complex; on the other hand, poetry is a matter of making wise and true meanings, of commanding our emotional assent by the intelligent disposition and inquisition of human experience.

[Vyoma Mistry · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lesson in writing exquisite metaphors

[Jan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Though I suppose the essays in this collection are arranged more in chronological order, "The Government of the Tongue" itself best conveys the aim of Seamus Heaney's prose. The title phrase has two meanings which together capture his vision of the interplay between the sound and the sense of poetry. On the one hand, poets seek to govern the tongue by giving their lyrics a structure and often a didactic sense, but Heaney argues that it is ultimately more important that the tongue be allowed to govern, that ultimately the sound, the tone, and the quirks and particulars of the writer lead into what we call poetry.
I believe a drier critic of poetry would use the term "logopoeia," but in getting his points across, Heaney favors real, lyrical English over a soup of Greek syllables. Though never blind to the circumstances from which a poet's vision may have arisen, as in the discussion of Irish poets, a love of the humanizing power of poetry is foremost. Also excellent is the breadth that is covered, ranging over Eliot, Auden, Lowell, and Plath, as well as plenty of others. Thanks for reminding me how much I love Philip Larkin!

[Margaret Joyce · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this 1988 collection of essays,each tackling the poetics of a particular 20th C poet, Seamus Heaney, winner in 1995 of the Nobel Prize for Literature, fleshes out an argument for poetry as "a category of human consciousness" that only survives when it puts "poetic considerations first-expressive considerations, that is, based upon its own genetic laws which spring into operation at the moment of lyric conception." It self-governs,is not beholden to the demands of a given political or social context.His observations are riveting, particularly in relation to the genius he reveres in the poetry of Sylvia Plath.

[Preston Patterson]

Very fluid material here. This fellow is seventy-two. Just finished chapter one of two. One interesting discussion in the book is later in the chapter about studying inspiration in language. Lifelikeness mentioned is the involvement of juxtaposition, where the sun is likened to flower and a dove is likened to a girl

[Susan Azar Porterfield]

What can I say. I found this book to be inspiring, especially the essay on Kavanagh, Lowell, and the essay entitled "The Govt. of the Tongue."

[Eric Boles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here is unfenced existence / Facing the sun, untalkative, out of reach