Heather Treseler at the LARB:
“DEAR JEEM,” the poet Seamus Heaney wrote to his friend, the poet and novelist Seamus Deane, in 1966, as both writers’ careers were finding their runway, “Here are the proofs [of your poems …] have you anything else to bung in here?” That summer, Heaney was editing a chapbook of Deane’s poems for the Belfast Festival. The two writers had met in grammar school at ages 11 and 10, respectively, and remained close friends throughout their lives—Heaney going on to become a globally acclaimed poet, translator, and Nobel laureate, while Deane’s career as a scholar, critic, and editor helped to spearhead Irish studies as a disciplinary field.
Yet on the heels of his warm address to “Jeem” (in other letters, Heaney calls his friend “Deansie” and “a stóirín,” or “my little treasure”), Heaney critiques the poems of Deane’s that had appeared in a recent edition of the prestigious British journal Encounter. “[T]he very luxuriance of the sounds is distracting,” he notes, “and possibly a bit too much: agglutinate, exfoliate, organically eviscerate all in three lines is too much for me.”
more here.
Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now.