HEANEY, Seamus. Door into the Dark. London: Faber and Faber, 1972.
8vo., original black publisher's cloth, ruled and lettered in gilt to spine; original dust wrapper (15s net) printed in green and red; pp. [viii], 9-56; a near-fine example, just a couple of minor marks to boards; in the very good jacket, sligthtly dirtied along the spine and lower panel but otherwise clean and bright; unusual thus.
Heaney's second Faber collection following Death of a Naturalist (1966). Boldly signed by the poet to the title page.
The poems collected together here expand upon the themes Heaney developed in his first collection, Death of a Naturalist. Later, in Stepping Stones, Heaney noted that “No poems were held over [from Death of a Naturalist] … From then on, it was start-again time.” Indeed, the following years in which the poems were written, 1965 to 1969, were rather tumultuous both politically and culturally. Heaney was 30 by the time the collection was published, married with two children, and living in rented accommodation in Belfast while teaching in the English department at Queen's University. The title is taken from The Forge, a poem which is set in the Blacksmith's workshop on Castledawson's Hillhead Road.
"With the sensuousness and physicality of language that would become the hallmark of his early writing, these poems graphically depict the author's rural upbringing, from the local forge to the banks of Lough Neagh, concluding in the preserving waters of the bogland and a look ahead to his next book, Wintering Out (1972)." (Faber and Faber).
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