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'I associate this book with adolescence with standing on the cusp of a world both exciting and daunting.' -- Daily Irish Mail, October 7 2010
'The book was lovingly edited by Gus Martin. He included biographical notes, plus glossaries that whetted the appetite and imagination.' -- Daily Irish Mail, October 7 2010
'It is one of the few textbooks in Ireland that has achieved a legendary status.' --Irish Examiner, 3 June 2010
'The book was lovingly edited by Gus Martin. He included biographical notes, plus glossaries that whetted the appetite and imagination.' -- Daily Irish Mail, October 7 2010
'It is one of the few textbooks in Ireland that has achieved a legendary status.' --Irish Examiner, 3 June 2010
Product Description
Soundings was first published in 1969. It was intended as an 'interim' anthology of poetry for the Leaving Certificate until such time as a more permanent volume could be devised. Twenty six years later it was replaced. In the meantime it had passed through the hands of hundreds of thousands of students in Ireland. Soundings might have been replaced but it was never fully forgotten. Old copies ended up with an individual personality honed out of manual annotations and thoughts, not all of them provided by the teacher. Scrawls in biro or pencil testified to the thoughts and daydreams many users. A surprising number of copies ended up in attics only to be rediscovered with delight many years later and to be given treasured status in new homes. One former student recalled how Soundings was the first school book to treat her as an adult. It made no concessions to the 'teenager'. It didn't patronise. Its imagery was entirely in the poetry. The typography was appalling but the cover design still resonates. A decade after its demise, second hand copies of Soundings were fetching surprising prices. It was widely discussed in chat-rooms on the web. There were increasing demands for a reprint. So here is Soundings, in its original form just as you remember it. The same stony grey soil of Patrick Kavanagh's Monaghan; T.S.Eliot's same women who come and go talking of Michaelangelo. Please enjoy once more!
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
I did my Leaving Cert in 1984 (still find that hard to believe actually!) and Soundings was the book we used for english poetry. To this day I often have wonderful lines of poetry pop into my head at random moments and every time it's been from something on the Leaving Cert list for that year i.e. from the Soundings collection. When I heard this book was being re-published I just had to have it, for nostalgic purposes if nothing else, but it's turned out to be so much more than that - there are some GREAT poems in here!! I've found most of the ones we did that year, which was fun, but I've also realised how many other fantastic works there are in here (obviously we didn't even bother looking at them when we were at school, no time). What a wonderful anthology this is!! When you're doing poetry just to get through a very important exam you don't exactly 'enjoy' it, but what's weird is how it stays with you and many years later you realise what a gift it was to be exposed to such art as a teenager. You can't underestimate the power of poetry, even if you originally only read it because it's on a syllabus. My Dad is 80 and he still quotes from poems he did in school - guess I'm turning into him! What a wonderful idea to reissue this book, which I certainly didn't appreciate at the time, but I definitely do now - and it's so nice to read these poems just for pleasure rather than to get a good grade (B in higher level, thank you Mrs Hayden for all your help!!). This book is suitable not just for Irish people of a certain age taking a trip down memory lane, it's also a really good collection of some CLASSIC poetry - Wordsworth, Shelley, WB Yeats, Emily Dickinson, Milton, TS Eliot, John Keats, Shakespeare - it's just really pretty amazing!
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
In a time when the Irish nation is undergoing a collective nervous breakdown and existential crisis, perhaps going back to basics is not such a bad thing. As a nation, we are guilty of many wrongs and can effortlessly do many things badly. Yet one of the few successes of the Irish nation is our education system in general and the leaving certificate in particular.
Soundings is part of our national psyche like Gay Byrne on the Late Late, the rose of Tralee, Tayto crisps and the GAA. We never actually liked the book when we had to use it and most of us never bothered to read the curiously titled 'explorations' after each poem which a tyrannical English teacher might actually get us to answer as homework. As for the glossary- well that was only used for the impenetrable Chaucer or Paradise Lost.
Yet many of us can still recite a line or two from many of the poems - in doing so the poems have become part of who we are. Rereading this book is a joy - both from a nostalgic point of view and also because after the passage of time a great number of the poems now actually make sense and have a meaning that we were yet to glean in our teenage years. Needless to say, you won't read this cover to cover but it is the kind of book to be dipped into every so often for a trip down memory lane.
Soundings is part of our national psyche like Gay Byrne on the Late Late, the rose of Tralee, Tayto crisps and the GAA. We never actually liked the book when we had to use it and most of us never bothered to read the curiously titled 'explorations' after each poem which a tyrannical English teacher might actually get us to answer as homework. As for the glossary- well that was only used for the impenetrable Chaucer or Paradise Lost.
Yet many of us can still recite a line or two from many of the poems - in doing so the poems have become part of who we are. Rereading this book is a joy - both from a nostalgic point of view and also because after the passage of time a great number of the poems now actually make sense and have a meaning that we were yet to glean in our teenage years. Needless to say, you won't read this cover to cover but it is the kind of book to be dipped into every so often for a trip down memory lane.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
This is a wonderful book, took me right back to my leaving cert. The best part is looking at this wonderful collection of poems afressh after so many years. They resonate in a new way. I cant recommend this book highly enough. Even better the Gill & McMillan who republished this collection is going to reissue the accompanying prose version later on this year. Well done G & M and also to Amazon for selling this amazing book at such a great price.
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