Product Description

A highly personal collection from one of the major cultural figures of the last 50 years, containing the lyrics to many of the best-loved Paul McCartney songs, and also poems that have never before been seen, including moving elegies to his late wife, Linda.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #190539 in Books
• Published on: 2002-03-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Before there was "let it go", there was "let it out and let it in" as Jude was urged to begin to know what love was. It is impossible to read any of Paul McCartney's lyrics without hearing the Beatles' musical refrain as it takes over the lines, dictating rhythm, pace and mood. In Blackbird Singing, his first poetry collection, early and later poems are brought together with some of his finest lyrics, including pop classics such as "Yesterday", "Lady Madonna" and "My Love". Lyrics such as "The Long and Winding Road" retain their poignancy on paper, while others resist being presented as verse and appear banal or trite: "Heart of the Country" and "Mull of Kintyre" teeter on the edge of embarrassment. One may feel that "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" seems naked and frail without the rousing brass section.

The collection is fondly edited by populist poet and fellow Liverpudlian Adrian Mitchell who pleads that readers clean out their heads, "wash out the name and the fame" and read what's here. "Dinner Tickets", a poem written about childhood and being caught with a sexy drawing of a female nude in his pocket allows McCartney's deeper vulnerability to slip through. "She Came in Through the Bathroom Window" shows off the wordplay McCartney favours--clever, simple and effective: "Sunday's on the phone to Monday,/ Tuesday's on the phone to me." The later poems reveal a more mature, sincere voice, distant from the quirky catching rhymes of "Ob-la-di Ob-la-da". "Standing Stone" unravels a strong, gutsy fable about a man using the power of imagination to fend off the enemy: He erects a standing stone, "a weathered finger to the sky" and learns to be "at peace with peace", watching a "blue sky laced with tight white webs;/ fields of high rye tickled skylarks,/ levitating stars." "Irish Language" boasts a rare streak of irony as the narrator admires the way "those Irish chappies" swill the language round their mouths and dribble it through their fingers, ending with the beautifully timed punch line: "The Beatles were a bunch of Micks". The book closes with poems dedicated to his late wife which are tender, sparse and reach for a startling honesty:

"clenched inside a glove
we sucked
each other's energy

Excerpted from Electric Light by Seamus Heaney. Copyright © 2001. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved
The Clothes Shrine

It was a whole new sweetness In the early days to find
Light white muslin blouses
On a see-through nylon line
Drip-drying in the bathroom
Or a nylon slip in the shrine
Of its own electricity -
As if St Brigid once more
Had rigged up a ray of sun
Like the one she'd strung on air
To dry her own cloak on
(Hard-pressed Brigid, so
Unstoppably on the go) -
The damp and slump and unfair
Drag of the workaday
Made light
Of and got through
As usual, brilliantly.

Customer Reviews

a steady light
It is my practice to review poetry books based on the first reading, which I consider the 'heart' reading rather than after subsequent readings - the 'learned' reading, where one uncoils the riddled intricacy of the writing and its associated histories. I feel the heart reading is more important because it tells me that the poet's emotions are alive in the writing rather than just some remote intellect creating puzzles. For me Heaney's genius will always lie in the twisting and turning of language and his marvellous insight. While I abhor Greco-Roman myth and name dropping in Modern Poetry, Heaney doesn't overdo it and this collection may not be his best, but it doesn't disappoint. The entry into each poem at a point where you feel you missed something and need to keep up brings an instant urgency to the reading. The subtle layering of each line with meanings is masterful. And the language, as usual, is brilliant.

My favourite poems after this (first) reading are 'Lupins', 'Turpin Song', 'The Clothes Shrine', 'The Gealtacht', the wonderfully evocative 'The Real Names' and many of the poems in the second section, especially the last two: 'Seeing the Sick' about his father which ends 'His smile a summer half-door opening out/ And opening in. A reprieving light./ For which the tendered morphine had our thanks.' and the title poem 'Electric Light' which simply demands reading. Out of chaos, beauty 'The smashed thumb-mail/ Of that mangled thumb was puckered pearl,' This book is steady Heaney conducting word-alchemy in the light of his mind's eye.

Familiar lyrics and new poetry from Paul make a good read
I was rather disappointed initially when I realised lyrics to Paul's music were included in Blackbird Singing. But reading them as poetry brought a whole new meaning to the prose. I shed tears when I heard the excellent Calico Skies. I cried buckets when I read Calico Skies. One of the many omissions was Footprints from Press to Play. Nevertheless many a gem was included. Thank you Paul, yet again.

Seamus again relights the distant past in a fresh light
Seamus Heaney's new collection is a much more mature, and possibly slightly more difficult collection to get into than his previous books.

One or two poems however mimic his early works very well; in the title poem "Electric Light" Heaney returns to his childhood and the wonder at first coming across the miracle of electricity. Although this may seem irrelevant from today's point of view, it had sharp consequences in rural Ireland's past, and is in a similar style to many of his older poems in the manner that he looks back to his childhood and his inability to comprehend the world around him.

Despite the requirement for an in-depth knowledge to fully appreciate some of the harder poems, especially those in the section where he writes tributes to 'lost' poets such as Ted Hughes, there is something here for every reader. This book is a great introduction to Heaney's work and after reading it you are likely to want to try some of his older collections.