The Pen Rests

Irish Poet Seamus Heaney Dies

Nobel laureate was 74.

Irish poet and Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney died at a hospital in Dublin after a short illness. He was 74. The eldest of nine children, Heaney was born on a farm in Northern Ireland and went on to become the most celebrated poet since W. B. Yeats, penning 13 poetry collections and two plays, as well as books on the writing process. He won the Nobel Prize in 1995 and later the prestigious Forward poetry prize, among other awards. Tributes quickly began pouring in through news and social-media sites, many quoting a line from "Digging," the much-loved first poem of his first collection, Death of a Naturalist: “Between my finger and my thumb, The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.”