Professing Poetry

Michael Cavanagh is Orville and Mary Patterson Routt Professor of Literature at Grinnell College.

Michael Cavanagh's Professing Poetry accomplishes the laudable task showing for the first time how pervasively and complexly the Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney's critical work has been informed by the majestic shades of the poet's personal canon, and how much in turn they have helped to shape the evolution of his poetry. This book, at once astute, readable, and well organized, is a significant contribution to the field of Heaney studies.""- Daniel Tobin, Professor and Chair of the Department of Writing, Literature and Publishing, Emerson College; ""Cavanagh knows Heaney's criticism and poetry inside-and-out, and he does an admirable job of discussing the influence of other writers on Heaney's poetry and criticism. While numerous critical studies of Heaney exist, Cavanagh's book is the first to bring Heaney's essays out from the wings to center stage.""- Henry Hart, The College of William and Mary; ""Cavanagh's elegant yet plain-spoken parsing of Seamus Heaney's prose in defense of poetry, and of poets, puts Cavanagh into the fine company of the leading American scholars of Heaney's poetry- Rand Brandes, Henry Hart, Helen Vendler, and Daniel Tobin. In Professing Poetry, Cavanagh empathetically explores Heaney's wavering confidences in the poets who have shaped our reading life in the twentieth century. Never doctrinaire or pretentious, Cavanagh's chapters read and reread Heaney's essays remaining mindful, as Heaney always does, that their assurances and affiliations point us toward understanding the services and satisfactions of poetry and, in particular, of Heaney's poetry.""- Thomas Dillon Redshaw, Editor Emeritus, New Hibernia Review