Squarings xliv

  Heaney revealed to DOD (p.325) ‘Shortly after I came home. I was pouncing for twelve lines on all kinds of occasions, chance sentences from my reading, chance sightings of dictionary entries ( ) chance visits to places that unlocked the word hoard’. Heaney also offered his reader a clue as to how to ‘enter’ the poems: You could think of every poem in ‘Squarings’ as the peg at the end of a tent-rope reaching up into the airy structure, but still with purchase on something earth­ier and more obscure (DOD 320); Heaney revisits an old ‘certainty’ and, using a fishing parallel, sets out how his convictions have changed. He pounces on a snippet from a Henry Vaughan poem he […]