The Rattle Bag: An Anthology of Poetry: 1

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There is nothing wrong with these stories, but we can serve our students better by including a wider selection of voices and identities. He grew up in the country, on a farm, in touch with a traditional rural way of life, which he wrote about in his first book Death of a Naturalist (1966). The poems were to be read less as Frostian "playthings in the playhouse" of the language and more as Yeatsian "monuments of [the soul's] magnificence". No doubt these are not merely serendipitous, and the editors do cheat at one point, following Marlowe's "Passionate Shepherd" with Raleigh's and Donne's reponses to it (Donne's only entry here: curious! There's an interesting focus on ballads and other anonymous verse; but, with a few exceptions, I was less convinced by the rather haphazard selection of verse in translation.

Bags of enlightenment | Books | The Guardian Seamus Heaney: Bags of enlightenment | Books | The Guardian

But now, simply by reason of age and experience, Ted and I had encountered much work we wished we had encountered earlier, when we were at school. The Rattle Bag, containing the favourite poems of Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes, is a well-loved poetry anthology essential for the student and the expert alike. Such a poem can come to feel like a pre-natal possession, a guarantee of inwardness and a link to origin. He attended the local school and in 1951 went as a boarder to St Columb's College, about 40 miles away in Derry (the poem 'Singing School' in North refers to this period of his life).

When Ted Hughes and I edited the poetry anthologies that eventually appeared as The Rattle Bag (1982) and The School Bag (1997), we thought along these lines and made our choices accordingly. It is a second stage in our understanding of poetry, when we no longer merely select and reject, but organise. These poems have been selected by the simple yet telling criteria that they are the personal favorites of the editors, themselves two of contemporary literature's leading poets. This is one of my favorite anthologies -- some standards, some real surprises, consistently chosen by idiosyncratic sensibilities that say as much about the editor poets as about the quality of the chosen work itself. Plus, since the new remake just dropped on Disney+, now is the perfect time to introduce our students to the classic version that we grew up with.

The Rattle Bag by Seamus Heaney | Goodreads The Rattle Bag by Seamus Heaney | Goodreads

In effect, this anthology has transformed the way we define and appreciate poetry, and it will continue to do so for years to come.And one of the things Mrs Wilson used to repeat to the elder of them offers a good way into this discussion. Faber Members get access to live and online author events and receive regular e-newsletters with book previews, promotional offers, articles and quizzes.