I’d picked up The Spirit Level at some point last year, but hadn’t actually got around it reading it. When I heard one of the authors was hosting a local event, as part of a festival of ideas and politics I decided now was the time to read it.

 

The Spirit Level attempts to relate income inequality to a whole host of other societal problems, such as violence and mental health. This was done by comparing the two with data sources from the World Bank, the World Health organisation, the United Nations etc. I would have preferred there to be a little more science, but what there was was convincing.

 

The authors find, not surprisingly, that where there are great disparities in wealth, there are heightened levels of social distrust.

 

Each chapter highlighted a different societal problem and compared it to income inequality. Where there were higher rates of inequality, the social problems increased consistently.

 

The contrast between the material success and social failure of many rich countries is an important signpost. It suggests that, if we are to gain further improvements in the real quality of life, we need to shift attention from material standards and economic growth to ways of improving the psychological and social wellbeing of whole societies

 

The talk by the author was interesting, if not mostly what I’d just read! He has a new book out, The Inner Level. I’ve yet to look into it, but I think I will now…

I have been working steadily through Heaney’s poetry in order of publication and this collection builds very comfortably on his previous work. His use of language is exquisite, especially when describing everyday situations, as in his description of a bricklayer at work in the poem 'Damsen'.

Over and over, the slur, the scrape and mix
As he trowelled and retrowelled and laid down
Courses of glum mortar. Then the bricks
Jiggled and settled, tocked and tapped in line.

As long as he writes like this, I am content to read volume after volume of his work, even if it were restricted to the utterly mundane and ordinary. In fact, the material is quite diverse, including ‘Mycenae Lookout’, a poem sequence that deals with aspects of the ancient Greek’s war against Troy.

‘Keeping Going’, a tribute to the steady and cheerful persistence of his brother as a farmer in a small community, would work as a reference to Heaney’s departure from this pleasant but perhaps restricted environment to be a teacher and poet, in the way that Patrick Kavanagh for example wrote of his need to leave farming for poetry, but jarringly this poem suddenly incorporates the drive-by shooting of a young acquaintance, targeted as an army reservist, giving a quite different sense to the quiet determination of his brother to simply keep going.

But you cannot make the dead walk or right wrong.
I see you at the end of your tether sometimes,
In the milking parlour, ...

The poem ‘Two Lorries’ employs a beautiful and whimsical account of a coal delivery to his mother, as a startling contrast to the use of a lorry loaded with explosives to “blow the bus station to dust and ashes.”

It would be possible to read through these two poems without being distracted from the generally benign tone of the collection, because there is no change of pace to signal the intrusion of sectarian violence into his rural scenes, and it is hard to determine the nature of his political commitment, other than the refusal to experience these atrocities in sectarian or ideological terms. It as though Heaney wishes – or feels obliged - to acknowledge the presence of this violence without being drawn into its frame on any level beyond the personal.

As in earlier collections, his silence is in fact very telling and I think appropriate. Nevertheless, these two poems in particular would be useful reading for those presently concerned with the UK’s Brexit negotiations and considering the risks of any return to the same political violence. It can become so banal, so unremarkable, which ought to terrify us.

I have been working steadily through Heaney’s poetry in order of publication and this collection builds very comfortably on his previous work. His use of language is exquisite, especially when describing everyday situations, as in his description of a bricklayer at work in the poem 'Damsen'.

Over and over, the slur, the scrape and mix
As he trowelled and retrowelled and laid down
Courses of glum mortar. Then the bricks
Jiggled and settled, tocked and tapped in line.

As long as he writes like this, I am content to read volume after volume of his work, even if it were restricted to the utterly mundane and ordinary. In fact, the material is quite diverse, including ‘Mycenae Lookout’, a poem sequence that deals with aspects of the ancient Greek’s war against Troy.

‘Keeping Going’, a tribute to the steady and cheerful persistence of his brother as a farmer in a small community, would work as a reference to Heaney’s departure from this pleasant but perhaps restricted environment to be a teacher and poet, in the way that Patrick Kavanagh for example wrote of his need to leave farming for poetry, but jarringly this poem suddenly incorporates the drive-by shooting of a young acquaintance, targeted as an army reservist, giving a quite different sense to the quiet determination of his brother to simply keep going.

But you cannot make the dead walk or right wrong.
I see you at the end of your tether sometimes,
In the milking parlour, ...

The poem ‘Two Lorries’ employs a beautiful and whimsical account of a coal delivery to his mother, as a startling contrast to the use of a lorry loaded with explosives to “blow the bus station to dust and ashes.”

It would be possible to read through these two poems without being distracted from the generally benign tone of the collection, because there is no change of pace to signal the intrusion of sectarian violence into his rural scenes, and it is hard to determine the nature of his political commitment, other than the refusal to experience these atrocities in sectarian or ideological terms. It as though Heaney wishes – or feels obliged - to acknowledge the presence of this violence without being drawn into its frame on any level beyond the personal.

As in earlier collections, his silence is in fact very telling and I think appropriate. Nevertheless, these two poems in particular would be useful reading for those presently concerned with the UK’s Brexit negotiations and considering the risks of any return to the same political violence. It can become so banal, so unremarkable, which ought to terrify us.

Less concrete when compare to "The Price of Inequality" but spread the same message in a different way.

Chats and chats and chats that compare why people living in less equality would make them less happy, less trusting. 

 

Just started on the first 4 chapters, already like it. 

 

Money mean less for a society when it already well fed. But then you are less happy when you are much poorer than your neighbors. 

 

Overall, it sucks for all people when society is too unequal. 

 

The data is kind of boring, but fact is fact. 

 

It is just not present in ways that get more interesting than looking at charts and statistics. 

 

But yes, being equal make people feel better about being alive.

 

And the rich does not suffer just because they feel less pride of themselves. 

 

The rest of the book is the same, it is not good or bad. For people who are not convince might not be too convince, as it is not "strong" enough tone. But fact is fact, and it is pretty well put together. 

 

 

I have to admit, even as I hate doing it, that the only Heaney I have read prior picking up this book is his translation of Beowulf. 

                To say that the poems in this collection are good would be correct.  They are bag of Irish life, ancient myth, and family life.  It is the Irish ones and “Mycenae Lookout” that tend to be the most powerful.  The power of Mycenae Lookout is obvious.  It is about Troy, told from various views, including a solider waiting for the return of his king and fellow soldiers even as he knows that the king’s welcome isn’t assured at all.

                “Two Lorries” is about, well, two lorries, one whom was in fact.  It is a powerful comment on the Troubles and the fight for Irish independence.   It is the type of poem you read and cannot forget. 

                Reading this small volume you realize how great Heaney was.