Mini Obits

[poliphilo]

I never got on board with Heaney. That "mud-caked" thing that people were praising him for just seemed like muddiness to me. The first half of the 20th century was a golden age for English language poetry; the second half was silver or bronze. That's what I think, anyway;  I could be completely wrong. Otherwise he seems to have been a thoroughly decent human being- which poets very rarely are.

David Frost was someone whose work I avoided. I found him smarmy and smug. He began as the Diogenes of his generation and quickly morphed into one of those rich ugly men who are always coming out of nightclubs with a starlet on their arm. 

Comments

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Heaney's translation / interpretation of Beowulf is pretty good.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I've only read extracts, but I think I like his translations better than his original poems.

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

Heaney is Poetry God. I wouldn't say he talked a lot about mud - he did talk about his childhood in an agricultural family. He was unparallelled for coining words and phrases and for sheer musicality. He was the true and great heir of Yeats but not half so high-flown. Loved him to bits, heard him read twice, such a modest and unassuming man.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm open to persuasion. Heaney has never really done it for me but...