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Seamus Heaney is, arguably, the best poet writing in English in the 20th century; his competition is another Irishman, W.B. Yeats. Both poets engaged to some degree with the issue of Ireland’s violent and unhappy history under British rule and with the murderous conflicts between Irish Catholics and Protestants. The euphemistic term for this national bloodshed and violence is The Troubles. Heaney rarely treats the Troubles explicitly in his poems, but there are lots of signposts in his verse that point to this brutal issue. Other Irish poets, Ciaran Carson, for example, have been critical of Heaney for failing to write about it. We will track this topic from his earliest poems onward and try to understand Heaney’s take on the Troubles: evasive and disengaged or perceptive and humane? In times of national crisis, must the best poet address the problem head on and identify the villains in verse? Class Limit: 15

Instructor John Ward has been professor and chair of Kenyon College (Gambier OH) English Department and has served as Dean of Centre College (Danville KY). He earned his B.A. from Amherst College and Ph.D. from the University of Virginia, and has taught courses in 18th- and 19th-century British literature and the history of the British novel. He has published on 18th- and 19th-century British works as well as those of Vachel Lindsay and Robert Lowell. Since retiring to Maine in 2006, he has taught many senior college courses, some them covering topics that were not part of his professional portfolio. Discovering or recovering great works by American and British authors in the company of senior colleagues has meant that, in fact, he has yet to retire.