Business Systems Books

The Haw Lantern
By Seamus Heaney
New York: The Noonday Press, 1987
52 pages


First, let us look at a simple, web-based definition of clearance, from

http://www.answers.com/topic/clearance:


The act or process of clearing.
A space cleared; a clearing.
The amount of space or distance by which a moving object clears something.
The height or width of a passage: an underpass with a 13-foot clearance.
An intervening space or distance allowing free play, as between machine parts.
Permission for an aircraft, ship, or other vehicle to proceed, as after an inspection of equipment or cargo or during certain traffic conditions.
Official certification of blamelessness, trustworthiness, or suitability.
A sale, generally at reduced prices, to dispose of old merchandise.
The passage of checks and other bills of exchange through a clearing-house.
Physiology.
The removal by the kidneys of a substance from blood plasma.
Renal clearance.



Since poets tend to be in love with words in and of themselves, the very sound and metaphor as well as their explicit meanings, my first thought on "Clearances," an eight-poem group in The Haw Lantern, was a
clearing - what you come across sometimes after wandering through woods. The volume's blurb tells us that the series is "a sonnte sequence concerning the death of the poet's mother." My first thoughts upon reading these poems was that the poet had spent some time wandering through other subjects - the woods - before arriving at stories about his mother. But clearance is not written until section 7, and it refers to emptiness felt immediately after the death of Mary Heaney: "Clearances that suddenly stood open./ High cries were felled and a pure change happened." Nothing seems right after her death, we read in section 8: "the decked chestnut tree had lost its place .../ my coeval/ Chestnut from a jam jar in a hole,/ Its heft and hush become a bright nowhere,/ A soul ramifying forever/ Silent, beyond silence listened for."

Loss and remembrance are thematic throughout The Haw Lantern, beginning with the first poem, "Alphabets," in which Heaney looks back on the days he learned to write, read, and his progression in both
through his early youth. He learns about letters with "A shadow his father makes with joined hands/ ... Like a rabbit's head. He understands/ He will understand more when he goes to school." His teacher shows him a trick for writing numbers - two is "A swan's neck and a swan's back/ Make the 2 he can see now as well as say." He associates the forms of objects with the alphabet: "A globe in the window tilts like a colored O [a letter mentioned four times in the poem]" and in its penultimate form reminds him of Roman Emperor Constantine's "You will conquer" - letters will never abandon him, though his youthful days it school are temporally irretrievable. Constantine's vision related to martial victory at the Milvian Bridge in 312 ("In hoc
signo vinces"); Heaney's is of a future as a man of letters. "O" would remain with him, allowing his fascination with language to come, literally, as in the shape of an "O," full circle with the "shadow."

In the second poem, "Terminus," the speaker becomes "the last earl on horseback in midstream." "Terminus" is less accessible to the general reader than "Alphabets." One has to have a keen awareness to its
allusions (are there still Earls in Northern Ireland, for example, and how does this subject, or symbol, relate to the poem?). If the poem is about poetry, the decision to become a writer, "Terminus" may be read as that liminal space right before a choice is made. "Baronies, parishes met where I was born./ When I stood on the central stepping stone/ ... I was the last earl on horseback in midstream/ Still parleying, in earshot of his peers." It is not the words but the themes which are dense and harder to tease out. Still, the narrator is "in midstream," neither here, nor there, but he has left the school-houses of "Alphabets."

As it is explained to reader before opening the volume that a good deal of its poems are about Mary

Heaney (almost 25 percent of the 31 poems), "The Haw Lantern" seems lush with themes, from nature to Diogenes of Sinope (the one who went around Athens with his lamp, looking for an honest man), to life that
touches - then leaves - you. It may be useful to look at what a haw is, the hawthorn bush, with its "lantern" being the bulbous red fruit. The crataegus is indeed found in Europe, along with much of the rest of the world. Its seeds are in its fruit, and it commonly puts out small white flowers. It is also, although not always, can be a thorn
bush. (Please note that I am basing this on my own knowledge of the hawthorn from cultivating it over the years. Others' results may vary.) But in Heaney's hawthorn, one perceives something of wonder, that could be healing - or dangerous:

The wintry haw is burning out of season,
crab of the thorn, a small light for small people,
the wick of self-respect from dying out.
not having to blind them with illumination.

"The wintry haw" may refer to the flowers, yet this is a bush "burning out of season" in the line's counterpoint. The plant is a guide to self-realization, but, in strophe two, it is also something which briefly affects you, before it "moves on." "It's blood prick that you wish would test and clear you,/ its pecked-at-ripeness that scans you, then moves on." As we enter into a topographical historo-political metaphor in "Parable Island" and the fate of an ancestral king in "A Ship of Death" before moving to "Clearances," the thing that "scans" will become, on subsequent readings, a life, a person, who has passed away -but not before leaving his or her mark.

The second stanza of "The Milk Factory" is almost cathartic in contrast to the poems that came before it. "There we go, soft-eyed calves of the dew,/ Astounded and assumed into fluorescence." It is a kindly image,
but their life "of the dew" is not to be as they grow and take their
place into the world of the eponymous title, but
the couplet at the end gentles the reader after all the emotional deprivation of the earlier poems.
Yet misplacement returns, strongly, in "The Wishing Tree." Reminiscent of Shel Silverstein's book, The
Giving Tree (1994), the tree that is helpful even in its human-based ruin, we are back in a land of
anthropomorphized nature, a tree as a beloved who has passed on:

I thought I saw her as the wishing tree that died
And saw it lifted, root and branch, to heaven,
Trailing a shower of all that had been driven

Need by need by need into its hale
Sap-wood and bark: coin and pin and nail
Came streaming from it like a comet-tail

Newly-minted and dissolved, I had a vision
Of an airy branch-head rising through damp cloud.
Of turned-up faces where the tree had stood.

Still, all is not corrupt in The Haw Lantern. One of my favorite Heaney poems is about life, birth, and reconciliation. "A Peacock's Feather," concerns the birth "Daisy, Daisy, English niece." Heaney says upfront, without the asking the reader to understand, that the poem is a love-song, "a billet-doux" to a newborn "Darkened with Celts' and Saxon's blood," and says "Let us pray. May tilth and loam,/ ... Breastfeed your love of house and wood." His Christening gift is the poem on her land, her spirit, 'Where this I drop for you, as I pass,/ Like the peacock's feather on the grass." Although not the last poem in the volume, it is the most hopeful piece in a book that is concerned mainly with decay and the bittersweet.

Another masterpiece by the great poet. The sequence concerning the death of poet's mother is extraordinarily moving.

This is a practical and "easy to use" book. For anyone who has to work with other people (isn't that most of us?) this book offers a clear map to navigate the process. Filled with worksheets, charts, and carefully outlined steps, it addresses every part of the collaborative process. It includes activities to get others on board with collaborative initiatives. I highly recommend it.

Any leader who is interested in achieving a competitive advantage for his or her company needs to have this book on his/her desk. This is the first book I have read on organizational design and redesign that is so practical and useful. It outlines a sound model for the strategic design process for companies to move toward collaboration. But the book's real value is in its numerous practical worksheets, charts, pictures, assessments, and exercises to help leaders, change agents, or consultants guide organizations in moving more toward collaboration.

The simplicity of this book makes it useful in many arenas -- as I said, it would be useful for managers, leaders and consultants in guiding organizational change. It would also be useful as a textbook for business or management classes in organizational change. Students these days are craving practicality to go along with the theory they learn -- this book offers both.

This book provides a wealth of practical information, strategic planning, and decission making tools. Very easy to follow and practice. Author has in depth knowledge on the subject. I love this book.

The book is clear, concise and to the point. One of the few books I have ever read that has profound ideas but, at the same time, is an easy read. The management principles outlined in this book can be applied to almost any profession--including educational administration. I firmly believe that a leader can't operate at full potential until he or she grasps the concepts in this book.

Product was purchased for a class. It arrived on time and in good shape.

A must for anyone who regularly needs to reference security related material. The Handbook of Loss Prevention and Crime Prevention is a comprehensive manual covering all aspects of Security and I highly recommend it to you.

It provides elementary and important knowledge to those who are interested in implementation of MRPII/ ERP on factories

Although this book is focused on material and capacity requirements planning from an MRP perspective, the information directly translates into ERP, making this book essential reading for anyone, business- or technically-oriented, in ERP. The reason is the techniques, issues and factors that this book covers are the same for either environment.

First, this book thoroughly describes materials management, workflow and production capacity, and does so in a clear manner. I especially appreciate the fact that the authors take pains to define and explain every term and concept that they introduce. This is a refreshing change from many book in which assumptions about the reader's knowledge is made, which often leads to frustration or misunderstanding. It also removes any ambiguity and ensures that terms that can have multiple meaning are placed into their proper context.

Second, some of the material is out of date. For example the cited limitations of MRP software applications that existed when this book was written in 1993 have long since been rectified in the newer ERP packages from SAP, Baan and J.D. Edwards. However, even in the obviously out-of-date sections of this book are hidden gems, such as the Class ABCD System that was first developed by Oliver Wright as a means of classifying the maturity of MRP implementations based on answers to a 35 question checklist. This checklist can be applied with virtually no modification to ERP systems. Other gems include the way the authors distill major concepts into their salient points, such as TQM, and show how they relate to MRP, again, the same comparisons can be applied to ERP.

The best thing about this book, however, is the detailed treatment of inventory control, materials requirements management, capacity planning and workflow - all of which are as integral to ERP as they are to the older MRP systems that this book describes. As you read this book you will gain an intimate knowledge of how everything works and fits together instead of a high-level conceptual understanding. That, in my opinion, is the best reason to get this book and thoroughly read it. In addition to this book I also recommend "Manufacturing Data Structures: Building Foundations for Excellence With Bills of Materials and Process Information" by Jerry Clement, John Sari and Andy Coldrick. That book adds the information systems perspective that is based on modern ERP systems and seamlessly augments the material in this book.

This is another great book in the extraordinary Harvard Business Review (HBR) paperback series. It is one of the books I highly recommend.

This book begins with an outstanding article on communities of practice by Wenger & Snyder. If you can't read Wenger & Snyder's entire book, be sure to read this article/chapter.

There is a chapter by Pfeffer & Sutton on the knowing-doing gap that's very helpful. John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid offer a fascinating chapter on knowledge transfer through casual discussion.

Perhaps the most useful chapter in the book is Hansen, Nohria, & Tierney's article on managing knowledge. In this chapter, they discuss the critical distinction between codification and personalization knowledge management systems. This chapter alone is worth the cost of the book.

Add to these chapters the work of Argyris, Mintzberg, and others, and you have a resource every practitioner should own.

Michael Beitler
Author of "Strategic Organizational Learning"

The title of this review is borrowed from Derek Bok who, when president of Harvard, responded to parents who crticized a recent tuition increase. Now the review.

This is one in a series of several dozen volumes which comprise the "Harvard Business Review Paperback Series." Each offers direct, convenient, and inexpensive access to the best thinking on the given subject in articles originally published by the Harvard Business School Review. I strongly recommend all of the volumes in the series. The individual titles are listed at this Web site: www.hbsp.harvard.edu. The authors of various articles are among the world's most highly regarding experts on the given subject. Each volume has been carefully edited. Supplementary commentaries are also provided in most of the volumes, as is an "About the Contributors" section which usually includes suggestions of other sources which some readers may wish to explore.

In this volume, we are provided with eight separate but related articles in which their authors examine these subjects: "The Organizational Frontier" (Wenger and Snyder), "The Smart-Talk Trap" (Pfeffer and Sutton), "Balancing Act: How to Capture Information Without Killing It" (Brown and Duguid), "What Your Strategy for Managing Knowledge?" (Hansen, Nohria, and Tierney), "Good Communicating That Blocks Learning" (Argyris), "Coevolving: At Last a Way to Make Synergies Work" (Eisenhardt and Galunic). "Organigraphs: Drawing How Companies Really Work" (Mintzberg and Van der Heyden), and "Stop Fighting Fires" (Bohn). Here are a few brief excerpts:

"As communities of practice generate knowledge, they renew themselves. They give both the golden eggs and the goose that lays them." (Wenger and Snyder)

"People will try to sound smart not only by being critical but also by using trendy, pretentious language." (Pfeffer and Sutton)

"[Organizational defensive routines] consist of all the policies, practices, and actions that prevent human beings from having to experience embarrassment or threat and, at the same time, prevent them from examining the nature and causes of that embarrassment or threat." (Argyris)

"The most effective decision makers are those at the business-unit level, where strategic perspective meets operating savvy." (Eisenhardt and Galunic)

No brief commentary such as this can do full justice to the rigor and substance of the articles provided. It remains for each reader to examine the list to identify those subjects which are of greatest interest to her or him. My own opinion is that all of the articles are first-rate. For me, one of this volume's greatest benefits is derived from various charts and diagrams included such as "How Consulting Firms Manage Their Knowledge" (on page 68). Here Hansen, Nohria, and Tierney juxtapose Codification with Personalization in areas such as competitive strategy, economic model, knowledge management strategy, information technology, and human resources. Another valuable chart is found on page 168. Bohn lists a series of "Rules of Thumb" (rational rules which create irrational results) and suggests why each such "Rule" should be carefully re-considered. Great stuff.

Even those who already subscribe to the Harvard Business Review will greatly appreciate this series because each volume gathers together separate but related articles (previously published in the HBR) on the same general subject. The cost of each volume in the series is relatively modest; the value provided is substantial. Those who share my high regard for this one are urged to read various books written by Peter Senge as well as Working Knowledge (Thomas H. Davenport and Laurence Prusak), Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together: A Pioneering Approach to Communicating in Business and in Life (William Isaacs), If Only We Knew What We Know: The Transfer of Internal Knowledge and Best Practice (Carla S. O'Dell et al), and finally, The Magic of Dialogue: Transforming Conflict into Cooperation (Daniel Yankelovich).

I would highly recommend this book to anyone that is a nurse manager/executive or has aspirations to be. This book is informative and entertaining and gives the information that you need to know in a way that is easily understood and able to be put to immediate practical use.

Great reference for nurse mangers/directors and any clinical mangager/director for that matter. Highly recommend it!

This exceptional college level text applies economic theory to every aspect of the healthcare field. The authors' profound and insightful conclusions are drawn from real world examples that allow physicians, healthcare consultants, HMO managers, government officials and yes, interested students, to comprehend the implications of healthcare issues from an organizational and governmental perspective. Additionally, the authors' conclusions are applicable when analyzing the American macro economy in which 14% of GDP originates in the healthcare field. A more astute microeconomics text does not exist!

After several years of business school, I can sincerely attest to the usefulness of this text. By concisely analyzing and interpreting the challenging material, Santerre and Neun transform Health Economics into a universally interpretable language. Importantly, the plethora of insights and empirical studies enhance each chapter. Also, this powerful text negates the need for course enhancing supplementary readings. This is one of very few texts that is worth its weight in gold!

Well..It has everything you need for Health insurance question or helath exconomic problem.

Dr. Henderson has written a book is very helpful to anyone interested in all factors that surround health policy. One does not have to have a background in economics to benefit from this book. It is an excellent reference to anyone who is pursuing a health-related degree, or simply interested in our current health care system, factors that have influenced the development of our current health care system, and comparisons to the health care systems of other countries, and more. I took the class on this subject from the author several years ago. He is extremely brilliant and knowledgable in his field, and very interesting. I am equally glad that I did not sell back the book. I have used it for a reference many times as I have continued on in my education.

I am very happy with the purchase transaction. Delivery was speedy and as ordered. The book is easy to read and being used for a college course. Thanks

I wrote a paper on managed care competition for an economics course. This book proved invaluable. Without any previous knowledge of health economics, I was able to read, learn, and understand a fairly complex subject in a short amount of time using this book. The text covers everything but remains at an undergrad level. The arguments and examples are simple, clear, interesting, and easy to remember. I definitely found this to be the best introduction and overview to health economics, after having read six or seven books on the subject.