I love the way Heaney uses simple language and makes it sing, and he does that here as well as he does it anywhere. His words carry tremendous authority and power. The book is so readable, but the poetry doesn't feel light. If I have one critique, it's that I wish he was a little less referential. So often, Dante or Virgil or someone will appear, and though I know this is true to Heaney's life and experience, I can't help but feel it becomes a way of propping the poems up with genius, but there's so much genius here already, they don't need any propping. Heaney's voice and his experience and the Irish landscape, both ecological and political, are more than enough. Maybe, though, he explains his reasoning here:A great one has put faith in "meaning"That runs through space like a wordScreaming and protesting, another in"Poet's imaginingsAnd memories of love":Mine for now I putIn steady-handedness maintainedIn books against its vanishing.I suppose there are some who will say that another Heaney collection is better and brighter, and they may be right. I am a lover, rather than a scholar, of his work. His faith in human connections is refreshing in an era of misanthropy and cynicism. (I don't know if he's directly replying to Roth's Human Stain in this title choice, but I like to imagine he is.) Coming out of a country whose violent history more than merits a darker view, Heaney's celebration of humanity is not naive but hard won and deeply felt. I admire the poems in this collection best where he allows that faith to surface amongst all its troubling antipathies. Seamus Heaney's human chain is busy with the connections of family relationships and acquaintances reaching into the past, alive with the tingle personal recollection gives them. These are poems about the chain of being and about how we're all linked. Almost all of them recall a family member or someone Heaney has known. Frequently they're identified by name. These poems aren't particularly lyrical, and that, plus the reader's unfamiliarity with the poet's personal association, lends them an extra measure of obscurity. But still some resonate with power. A long poem called "Route 110," evokes with its mention of Lake Avernus and lines about shades and shadows the journey of Dante and Virgil. But Heaney can be brighter, too. In the last poem, "A Kite for Aibhin," he leaves the reader lightheaded with an image of a kite bobbing in the wind, a celebration of the individual grown into independence, lifted free of family.
What do You think about Human Chain - 1st Edition/1st Printing (2010)?
Heaney's swan song is everything it should be, and reading it often is one of my greatest pleasures.
—barry
A remarkable collection ---Heaney's work does not diminish with age.
—kalikala
Marvelous poems by a master who has not lost his touch.
—Britt
A great display of Heaney's ability as a poet.
—itsobi
