In an interview last year, Seamus Heaney reflected on writing a villanelle to mark Harvard’s 350th anniversary in 1986. “There’s a performance element to it,” he said of the song-like poetic form of 19 lines used brilliantly by Dylan Thomas, Elizabeth Bishop, and just a few others. Read it too smooth and it sounds “pat,” said Heaney, who reprised the poem at Harvard in 2012. Read it too rough and “it sounds galumphing along.”
Read more: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2013/08/seamus-heaney-dies-at-74/
