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Books

Seamus Heaney: no shuffling or cutting — just turning over aces

Craig Raine pays homage to the genius of Seamus Heaney in a review of his New Selected Poems

13 December 2014

9:00 AM

13 December 2014

9:00 AM

New Selected Poems: 1966–1987 Seamus Heaney

Faber, pp.256, £18.99, ISBN: 9780571321742

New Selected Poems: 1988–2013 Seamus Heaney

Faber, pp.240, £18.99, ISBN: 9780571321711

The impersonator — Rory Bremner, Steve Coogan — speaks, in different voices, to a single primitive pleasure centre in his audience. Counterintuitively, we like the imposition of imposture. We connive at deceit, at replication, for the release of neurotransmitters, the flood of endorphins — the brandies of the brain. I once heard Peter Ustinov on a chat show replicate the sound of an electric bell being pressed.

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'New Selected Poems: 1966–1987', £16.99 and 'New Selected Poems:
1988–2013', £16.99 are available from the Spectator Bookshop. Tel: 08430 600033

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