Tongue of water, teeth of stones
Subtitle: Northern Irish poetry and social violence
By: Jonathan Hufstader.
Series: Irish literature, history, and culture
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Published: 1999
Place of publication: Lexington
Language: eng
Number of pages: 324
Subjects: English poetry -- Irish authors -- History and criticism; Literature and society -- Northern Ireland -- History -- 20th century; Poets, Irish -- Homes and haunts -- Northern Ireland; Social problems in literature; Violence in literature; Northern Ireland -- Intellectual life; Northern Ireland -- In literature
Description: "In a 1984 lecture on poetry and political violence, Seamus Heaney remarked that "the idea of poetry was itself that higher ideal to which the poets had unconsciously turned in order to survive the demeaning conditions." Jonathan Hufstader examines the work of Heaney and his contemporaries to discover how poems, combining conscious technique with unconscious impulse, work as aesthetic forms and as strategies for emotional survival."--BOOK JACKET.

"Focusing on both style and social contexts, Hufstader explores the tension between solidarity and art, between the poet's need to belong and to rebel. He believes that an understanding of the power of lyric points towards an understanding of the source of social violence, and of its cessation. Hufstader provides a fresh account of the relationship between lyric poetry and political violence in Northern Ireland."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [309]-317) and index.