Seamus Heaney and American Poetry

Dr Christopher Laverty is an academic researcher based at Queen's University, Belfast, where he completed his PhD in 2019. His work has been published in Twentieth-century Literature, Irish Studies Review, and Estudios Irlandeses.

This book examines the influence of American poetry on Seamus Heaney's achievement by close attention to the themes, style, and resonances of his poetry at different stages of his career, including his appointments in Berkeley and Harvard. Beginning with an examination of Heaney's education at Queen's University, this study presents comparative close readings which explore the influence of five American poets he read during this period: Robert Frost, John Crowe Ransom, Theodore Roethke, Robert Lowell, and Elizabeth Bishop. Laverty demonstrates how Heaney returned to several of these poets in response to difficulty and to consolidate later aesthetic developments. Heaney's ambivalent critical treatment of Sylvia Plath is investigated, as is his partial misreading of Bishop, who is understood today more sensitively than in her lifetime. This study also probes the reasons for his elision of other prominent American writers, making this the first comprehensive assessment of American influence on Heaney's poetry. 

Provides a decisive account of Heaney's debt to his American influences

Chapter 1 - Introduction: America and Northern Ireland.- Chapter 2 - Belfast: Heaney in the 1960s.- Chapter 3 -  California 1970-71.- Chapter 4 - Together and Apart: Heaney and Lowell.- Chapter 5 - The Walk on Air: Heaney and Bishop.- Chapter 6 - American Poetry and Heaney's Final Works.- Chapter 7 - Conclusion.