Word: fields
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Dates: during 1980-1980
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WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS once claimed that when we argue with someone else, it's rhetoric, but when we argue with ourselves, it's poetry. Irish poet Seamus Heaney conforms to his precursor's observation. In Field Work, Heaney often challenges his decision to write, yet at the same time believes in his own artistic commitment...
Heaney always digs roots in his ongoing field work, and the pinnacle of his efforts comes in his Glanmore sonnet sequence. (Glanmore was the author's home for four years after he left Belfast.) These poems must be considered the centerpiece of Field Work, and are wonderfully successful in their fusion of reach and reticence. In them, Heaney also demonstrates that versification is not extinct. He chisels rhymes out of unlikely word combinations, and simultaneously knows when to interrupt his alliteration with parenthetical asides...
...dressing room beneath the stands, the roar of the 103,985 spectators rose and fell like the sound of distant breakers. Then, suddenly, the game was over-and the first black-and-gold jerseys appeared at the end of the floodlit passageway leading from the Rose Bowl playing field. The huge Pittsburgh Steelers ran with mincing steps, cleats sliding nervously on the concrete. Their eyes glittered with exhilaration, and some threw back their heads and whooped triumphantly...
...syndicate that bid successfully to purchase the National League's last-place New York Mets for $21.1 million. Said Nelson in the new owners' first hot-stove-league pronouncement: "Running a baseball team is like selling a book. If you put a good team on the field, the fans will come." Some fans thought Nelson knew more about pricing books than baseball teams. After all, before spirited bidding by several would-be buyers shot the Mets' price skyhigh, the American League Champion Baltimore Orioles recently changed hands for $12 million, or about half the Mets' ticket...
...rural junkyards. Keeble resonantly plays the present against the past, especially in descriptions of Erks' dangerous drive over the mountains and across deserts. There are intensely perceived set pieces: a dog battling a possum; a woman reassembling a carburetor with Zen-like grace; a Snopesian funeral in a field littered with rusty tractor parts and dominated by the sight and smell of a huge pig roasting on a spit...