Sweeney Astray

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Seamus Heaney, “Notebook with ms drafts for the poem ‘Sweeney Astray’”, MS 41, 932/1, Dublin, National Library of Ireland. Christian Science Monitor, April 22, 1999, Elizabeth Lund, "The Enticing Sounds of This Irishman's Verse," p. 20; February 3, 2000, "' Harry Potter' Falls to a Medieval Slayer," p. 1; April 13, 2000, p. 15; April 26, 2001, p. 19.

Astray'' is the delicate, dramatic balance between pain and praise. The poem is a balanced statement about a tragically unbalanced mind. One feels that this balance, urbanely sustained, is the product of a long, imaginative bond Sweeney, driven to live in the trees, praises them with a love and knowledge I find unforgettable. Yet even here the sense of beauty is shot through with loneliness and fear. Sweeney never escapes completely. Menace lives even at the heart of praise. Wood, adj., n.2, and adv.”, Oxford English Dictionary Online. Likewise, the Irish word geilt (used (...)Author of introduction) Thomas Flanagan, There You Are: Writing on Irish and American Literature and History, edited by Christopher Cahill, New York Review Books, 2003. With Rebecca James, Miles Graham, Raphael Lyne) The May Anthology of Oxford and Cambridge Poetry (Varsity/Cherwell, Oxford, England) ,1993.

This volume is handsome testimony to Heaney’s lifelong service to a noble art." —David Wheatley, The Guardian Astray,'' a complete translation of the medieval Irish work ''Buile Suibhne,'' shows that Seamus Heaney's imagination is continuing to deepen in intensity and range. Eventually, Sweeney runs into his wife, who has now taken a place with one of two rightful successors and Sweeney recalls: “Do you remember, lady, the great love we shared when we were together? Life is still a pleasure to you but not to me.” And a humorous and beautiful exchange takes place between them where the dialogue is in poetic format. After their exchange, Sweeney is chased by Lynchseachan who eventually convinces him to return to his home at Dal-Arie, until Sweeney realizes he is being made a fool of and escapes. Suffice to say, he eventually runs into a fellow madman who asks Muirghil to give Sweeney milk each night, but due to a row between Muirghil and another woman, the other woman convinces Muirghil’s husband that Muirghil is with another man (Sweeney). The jealousy plays out to a tragic consequence for Sweeney: Heaney, Seamus. Sweeney Astray: A Version from the Irish. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1983: unnumbered front-matter. Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 40: Poets of Great Britain and Ireland since 1960, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1985.Contributor to 101 Poems Against War, edited by Matthew Hollis and Paul Keegan, Faber and Faber (London, England), 2003. In one of his poems, called ''The Harvest Bow,'' Mr. Heaney says, ''The end of art is peace.'' At the end of this work, Sweeney finds his own kind of peace. But what one remembers most about ''Sweeney Los Angeles Times Book Review, March 2, 1980; October 21, 1984; June 2, 1985; October 27, 1987; August 26, 1990; December 27, 1992. Hensen, Michael, and Annette Pankratz, editors, The Aesthetics and Pragmatics of Violence, Stutz (Passau, Germany), 2001.