Gravity and Grace: Seamus Heaney and the Force of Light

In this thoughtful and carefully argued book, John Desmond uncovers Christian and transcendent elements in Seamus Heaney's poetry by reading it through the intellectual perspectives of the well-known poet Czeslaw Milosz and the French philosopher Simone Weil. Weil was a powerful influence on Milosz's thought and writing; Milosz, in turn, exercised considerable influence on Heaney's thought and poetry. Desmond utilizes these connections in order to show the way Weil's thought about Christianity and transcendence illuminates Heaney's complex relationship with Christianity. Desmond's sensitive readings of Heaney's poems through this new lens reveal previously unexplored depths in the work of the Nobel Prize-winning poet.