Oct 29, 2009 - Sale 2192

Sale 2192 - Lot 233

Price Realized: $ 4,560
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
HEANEY, SEAMUS. Two items: Autograph Letter Signed, "Seamus" * Autograph Poem, fragment of a working draft of his "Funeral Rites," with several corrections, unsigned. The letter, to "Dear Barry," in blue ink, sending a poem [possibly "Funeral Rites"], apologizing that it is late, recalling an evening together, and inviting him to get in touch when in Ireland. 1 page, 4to; staple and staple stains in upper left, horizontal folds. The poem, in blue and black ink, 60 lines beginning "Such temperate dying, / customary sorrows, / and the luxuriant piety / of anniversaries!" 1 page, 4to; minor scattered smudging, minor scattered creases. "Glanmore Cottage," 1 May 1974; Np, nd
Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

The letter: "Travel broadens the mind but seems to shorten the memory: it is a month--it was to have been ten days--I apologize. I hope, anyhow, you still like Funeral Rites, relieved of its 'inconsolables.'
"That was a marvellous evening: I haven't got round to trying the story of the man with the suit, which is more of an epiphany than a joke, partly because I forget the sequence, partly because the conditions have to be right. But if I heard it again, I'd plagiarize. . . ."