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One Of The Very First Poems I Wrote Was Docker That Fist Would Drop A Hammer On A Catholic And One Of The Sturdiest Was Requiem For The Croppies, Written 50 Years After 1916 [the Year Of The Easter Rising]. Being Responsible And What It Means, What It Demands, Have Indeed Preoccupied Me Maybe Too Much. But This Is It, This Is The Thing, This Is What You're Up Against.

-Seamus Heaney

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One Of The Very

Seamus Heaney

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One Of The Very First Poems I Wrote Was Docker That Fist Would Drop A Hammer On A Catholic And One Of The Sturdiest Was Requiem For The Croppies, Written 50 Years After 1916 [the Year Of The Easter Rising]. Being Responsible And What It Means, What It Demands, Have Indeed Preoccupied Me Maybe Too Much. But This Is It, This Is The Thing, This Is What You're Up Against.

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Once I Was On The Job, Once I Had Got Started, I Felt Safe Enough, But The Anticipation Made Me Tense.

Im A Firm Believer In Learning By Heart.

Sink Every Impulse Like A Bolt. Secure The Bastion Of Sensation. Do Not Waver Into Language. Do Not Waver In It.

It Has As Much To Do With The Energy Released By Linguistic Fission And Fusion, With The Buoyancy Generated By Cadence And Tone And Rhyme And Stanza, As It Has To Do With The Poem's Concerns Or The Poet's Truthfulness.

The Gift Of Writing Is To Be Self-forgetful...

If Self Is A Location, So Is Love: Bearings Taken, Markings, Cardinal Points, Options, Obstinacies, Dug Heels, And Distance, Here And There And Now And Then, A Stance.

History Says, Don’t Hope On This Side Of The Grave, But Then, Once In A Lifetime The Longed-for Tidal Wave Of Justice Can Rise Up, And Hope And History Rhyme

Once In A Lifetime

The Gift Of Writing Is To Be Self-forgetful... To Get A Surge Of Inner Life Or Inner Supply Or Unexpected Sense Of Empowerment, To Be Afloat, To Be Out Of Yourself.

Desmond O'grady Is One Of The Senior Figures In Irish Literary Life, Exemplary In The Way He Has Committed Himself Over The Decades To The Vocation Of Poetry And Has Lived Selflessly For The Art

The Completely Solitary Self: That's Where Poetry Comes From, And It Gets Isolated By Crisis, And Those Crises Are Often Very Intimate Also.

Hope Is Not Optimism, Which Expects Things To Turn Out Well, But Something Rooted In The Conviction That There Is Good Worth Working For.

As Writers And Readers, As Sinners And Citizens, Our Realism And Our Aesthetic Sense Make Us Wary Of Crediting The Positive Note.

Without Needing To Be Theoretically Instructed, Consciousness Quickly Realizes That It Is The Site Of Variously Contending Discourses.

The Next Move Is Always The Test.

Believe That A Further Shore Is Reachable From Here.

No Bit Of The Natural World Is More Valuable Or More Vulnerable Than The Tree Bit. Nothing Is More Like Ourselves, Standing Upright, Caught Between Heaven And Earth, Frail At The Extremities, Yet Strong At The Central Trunk, And Nothing Is Closer To Us At The Beginning And At The End, Providing The Timber Boards That Frame Both The Cradle And The Coffin.

All I Know Is A Door Into The Dark

The Thing About Writing Is That If You Have The Impulse, You Will Find The Time.

Harvard Meant A Lot In My Writing Life From The Beginning, Even Though I Didnt Actually Do Much Composition On The Spot.

One Of The Very First Poems I Wrote Was Docker That Fist Would Drop A Hammer On A Catholic And One Of The Sturdiest Was Requiem For The Croppies, Written 50 Years After 1916 [the Year Of The Easter Rising]. Being Responsible And What It Means, What It Demands, Have Indeed Preoccupied Me Maybe Too Much. But This Is It, This Is The Thing, This Is What You're Up Against.

Nowadays, What An Award Gives Is A Sense Of Solidarity With The Poetry Guild, As It Were: Sustenance Coming From The Assent Of Your Peers On The Judging Panel.

But Even So, None Of The News Of These World-spasms Entered Me As Terror.

God Is A Foreman With Certain Definite Views Who Orders Life In Shifts Of Work And Leisure.

Harvard Created Wonderful Conditions For Me As A Writerbut The Writing Was Done, Almost Entirely, When I Got Home.

The Dotted Line My Father's Ashplant Made On Sandymount Strand Is Something Else The Tide Won't Wash Away.

Memory Has Always Been Fundamental For Me. In Fact, Remembering What I Had Forgotten Is The Way Most Of The Poems Get Started.

I Drink To Keep Body And Soul Apart.

I Shall Gain Glory Or Die.

On The Contrary, A Trust In The Staying Power And Travel-worthiness Of Such Good Should Encourage Us To Credit The Possibility Of A World Where Respect For The Validity Of Every Tradition Will Issue In The Creation And Maintenance Of A Salubrious Political Space.

If You Have The Words, There's Always A Chance That You'll Find The Way.

Strange, It Is A Huge Nothing That We Fear.

Not To Learn Irish Is To Miss The Opportunity Of Understanding What Life In This Country Has Meant And Could Mean In A Better Future. It Is To Cut Oneself Off From Ways Of Being At Home. If We Regard Self-understanding, Mutual Understanding, Imaginative Enhancement, Cultural Diversity And A Tolerant Political Atmosphereas A Desirable Attainments, We Should Remember That A Knowledge Of The Irish Language Is An Essential Element In Their Realisation.

I've Nothing Against The Queen Personally: I Had Lunch At The Palace Once Upon A Time.

Once Upon A Time

But That Citizen's Perception Was Also At One With The Truth In Recognizing That The Very Brutality Of The Means By Which The Ira Were Pursuing Change Was Destructive Of The Trust Upon Which New Possibilities Would Have To Be Based.

I Don't Miss Teaching. I'm Learning To Take My Time For Myself.

The Way We Are Living, Timorous Or Bold, Will Have Been Our Life.

The End Of Art Is Peace.

I Rhyme… To See Myself, To Set The Darkness Echoing.

Now It’s High Watermark And Floodtide In The Heart And Time To Go. The Sea-nymphs In The Spray Will Be The Chorus Now. What’s Left To Say? Suspect Too Much Sweet-talk But Never Close Your Mind. It Was A Fortunate Wind That Blew Me Here. I Leave Half-ready To Believe That A Crippled Trust Might Walk And The Half-true Rhyme Is Love.

A Writer Is Not Different From A Reader, In That The Common Ragbag Of Orthodoxies And Assumptions Is What A Poet Has To Work With As Well.

I Always Believed That Whatever Had To Be Written Would Somehow Get Itself Written.

I Have Always Thought Of Poems As Stepping Stones In One's Own Sense Of Oneself.

Stepping Stones

So Hope For A Great Sea-change On The Far Side Of Revenge. Believe That Further Shore Is Reachable From Here. Believe In Miracles And Cures And Healing Wells.

Publication Is Rather Like Pushing The Boat Out; Then The Boat/book Turns Into A Melting Ice Floe And You Have To Conjure A Second Boat Which Again Turns Into A Melting Floe Under Your Feet. All The Stepping Stones That You Conjure Disappear Under The Water Behind You.

It Is Always Better To Avenge Dear Ones Than To Indulge In Mourning. For Every One Of Us, Living In This World Means Waiting For Our End. Let Whoever Can Win Glory Before Death. When A Warrior Is Gone, That Will Be His Best And Only Bulwark.

Write Whatever You Like!

Getting Started, Keeping Going, Getting Started Again - In Art And In Life, It Seems To Me This Is The Essential Rhythm Not Only Of Achievement But Of Survival, The Ground Of Convinced Action, The Basis Of Self-esteem And The Guarantee Of Credibility In Your Lives, Credibility To Yourselves As Well As To Others.

My Point Is There's A Hidden Scotland In Anyone Who Speaks The Northern Ireland Speech. It's A Terrific Complicating Factor, Not Just In Northern Ireland, But Ireland Generally.

Wherever That Man Went, He Went Gratefully.

Don't Be Surprised If I Demur, For, Be Advised My Passport's Green.

Anything Can Happen, On The Other Hand, Is Not Only About The Atrociousness Of The September 11 Attack, It Is Also A Premonition Of The Deadly Retaliation That Was Bound To Come.

The Ability To Start Out Upon Your Own Impulse Is Fundamental To The Gift Of Keeping Going Upon Your Own Terms. . . . Getting Started, Keeping Going, Getting Started Again In Art And In Life, It Seems To Me This Is The Essential Rhythm.

In Off The Moors, Down Through The Mist Beams, God-cursed Grendel Came Greedily Loping.

If Poetry And The Arts Do Anything, They Can Fortify Your Inner Life, Your Inwardness.

If Self Is A Location, So Is Love.

Even If The Hopes You Started Out With Are Dashed, Hope Has To Be Maintained.

The Bogholes Might Be Atlantic Seepage. The Wet Centre Is Bottomless.

When I Was Teaching, I Gave A Lot Of My Mind And Anxiety To It. There Was Always Something Clenched And Anxious In Me Until The Classes Were Over.

When I First Encountered The Name Of The City Of Stockholm, I Little Thought That I Would Ever Visit It, Never Mind End Up Being Welcomed To It As A Guest Of The Swedish Academy And The Nobel Foundation.

The External Reality And Inner Dynamic Of Happenings In Northern Ireland Between 1968 And 1974 Were Symptomatic Of Change, Violent Change Admittedly, But Change Nevertheless, And For The Minority Living There, Change Had Been Long Overdue.

There Is Not Built-in Meaning To Anything, We Are Free To Add Any Meaning We Choose To Give It.

I Felt Implicated In American Affairs.outraged At The Blatant Lies About Iraqs Involvement In Al Qaeda, At The Regimes Arrogance And Stupidity, Guantnamo Bay And All The Rest Of It. But The Poems At The Start Of District And Circle Anahorish 1944, The Aerodromearent Particularly Aimed As Criticism. On The Contrary, There's A Recognition Of The Big Contribution To World Order Made In Europe During World War Ii.

Loyalism, Or Unionism, Or Protestantism, Or Whatever You Want To Call It, In Northern Ireland - It Operates Not As A Class System, But A Caste System.

Whether It Be A Matter Of Personal Relations Within A Marriage Or Political Initiatives Within A Peace Process, There Is No Sure-fire Do-it-yourself Kit.

Ireland And The Irish

The Ireland I Now Inhabit Is One That These Irish Contemporaries Have Helped To Imagine.

Then As The Years Went On And My Listening Became More Deliberate, I Would Climb Up On An Arm Of Our Big Sofa To Get My Ear Closer To The Wireless Speaker.

In Fact, In Lyric Poetry, Truthfulness Becomes Recognizable As A Ring Of Truth Within The Medium Itself.

Even If The Last Move Did Not Succeed, The Inner Command Says Move Again.

Between My Finger And My Thumb The Squat Pen Rests; Snug As A Gun. ~from The Poem "digging

Suspect Too Much Sweet Talk But Never Close Your Mind.

It Is Difficult At Times To Repress The Thought That History Is About As Instructive As An Abattoir.

Best To Say That Once A Poem Is Finished I Trust It To Make Its Way, And I Trust Readers Will Find Their Way To It And Through It, If The Thing Has Got Itself Rightly Expressed.

It Is Difficult At Times To Repress The Thought That History Is About As Instructive As An Abattoir; That Tacitus Was Right And That Peace Is Merely The Desolation Left Behind After The Decisive Operations Of Merciless Power.

The Most Exhilarating For The Writer And The Reader, Are Gift-things-poems Which Arrive On Their Own Energy, Poems That In William Shakespeare's Term "slip" From You.

My Body Was Braille For The Creeping Influences.

I Might Enjoy Being An Albatross, Being Able To Glide For Days And Daydream For Hundreds Of Miles Along The Thermals. And Then Being Able To Hang Like An Affliction Round Some People's Necks.

The Aim Of Poetry And The Poet Is Finally To Be Of Service, To Ply The Effort Of The Individual Into The Larger Work Of The Community As A Whole.

Smile As You Find A Rhythm Working You, Slow Mile By Mile, Into Your Proper Haunt.

I Suppose I Did Feel A Certain Public Pressure Always.

Yet There Are Times When A Deeper Need Enters, When We Want The Poem To Be Not Only Pleasurably Right But Compellingly Wise, Not Only A Surprising Variation Played Upon The World, But A Re-tuning Of The World Itself.

My Teaching Was Animated By What I Was Reading And Being Excited By As A Poet.

Once Off The Bush The Fruit Fermented, The Sweet Flesh Would Turn Sour. I Always Felt Like Crying. It Wasn't Fair That All The Lovely Canfuls Smelt Of Rot. Each Year I Hoped They'd Keep, Knew They Would Not. -blackberry Picking

I Can't Think Of A Case Where Poems Changed The World, But What They Do Is They Change People's Understanding Of What's Going On In The World.

Anything Can Happen Is Also, Incidentally, A Poem That Arose From Teaching. I'd Talked About The Horace Ode (i, 34) [on Which The Poem Is Based] In A Lecture I Gave At Harvard In The Fall Of 2000 Entitled Bright Boltsand Remembered It After The Twin Towers Attack.

To Begin With, I Wanted That Truth To Life To Possess A Concrete Reliability, And Rejoiced Most When The Poem Seemed Most Direct, An Upfront Representation Of The World It Stood In For Or Stood Up For Or Stood Its Ground Against.

Part Of My Gradual Education Of Myself Has Been To Think That There Is A Deep Relationship Between The Nature Of The Creature And The Worth Of The Art.

Deep Relationship

You Had To Come Back To Learn How To Lose Yourself, To Be Pilot And Stray-witch, Hansel And Gretel In One.

Losing Yourself

Debate Doesn’t Really Change Things. It Gets You Bogged In Deeper. If You Can Address Or Reopen The Subject With Something New, Something From A Different Angle, Then There Is Some Hope. ... People Are Suddenly Gazing At Something Else And Pausing For A Moment. And For The Duration Of That Gaze And Pause, They Are Like Reflectors Of The Totality Of Their Own Knowledge And/or Ignorance. That’s Something Poetry Can Do For You, It Can Entrance You For A Moment Above The Pool Of Your Own Consciousness And Your Own Possibilities.

I Am Not A Playwright. A Playwright Would Take "antigone" And Hit It A Few Clouts And Knock It Out Of Shape And Restructure It. My Versioning Was Strictly Verbal.

Poetry Is Always Slightly Mysterious, And You Wonder What Is Your Relationship To It.

The Main Thing Is To Write For The Joy Of It. Cultivate A Work-lust That Imagines Its Haven Like Your Hands At Night Dreaming The Sun In The Sunspot Of A Breast. You Are Fasted Now, Light-headed, Dangerous. Take Off From Here.

At Home In Ireland, There's A Habit Of Avoidance, An Ironical Attitude Towards The Authority Figure.

Poetry Cannot Afford To Lose Its Fundamentally Self-delighting Inventiveness, Its Joy In Being A Process Of Language As Well As A Representation Of Things In The World.

Hope For A Great Sea-change Timid To Rebuke And Too Petty To Forgive.

Walk On Air Against Your Better Judgement.

I Credit Poetry For Making This Space-walk Possible.

The Poems I Did Write There [in Harvard] Include Alphabets The 1984 Phi Beta Kappa Poem And A Sofa In The Forties. And, Of Course, The John Harvard Poem For The 350th Anniversary Villanelle For An Anniversary.

Irish Readers, British Readers, American Readers: Is It Odd That I Haven't A Clue About How Differently They React? Or Better Say, I Cannot Find The Words To Describe My Hunch About Them.

I Have Begun To Think Of Life As A Series Of Ripples Widening Out From An Original Center.

I Have Always Thought Of Poems As Stepping Stones In One's Own Sense Of Oneself. Every Now And Again, You Write A Poem That Gives You Self-respect And Steadies Your Going A Little Bit Farther Out In The Stream. At The Same Time, You Have To Conjure The Next Stepping Stone Because The Stream, We Hope, Keeps Flowing.

A Public Expectation, It Has To Be Said, Not Of Poetry As Such But Of Political Positions Variously Approvable By Mutually Disapproving Groups.

I Suppose I'm Saying That Defiance Is Actually Part Of The Lyric Job

The Fact Of The Matter Is That The Most Unexpected And Miraculous Thing In My Life Was The Arrival In It Of Poetry Itself - As A Vocation And An Elevation Almost.

The Whole Relationship Between A Writer's Spiritual/emotional Condition And The Kind Of Wordstuff And Form-making That's Going On In His Work Is An Interesting One. When I Was An Undergraduate, There Was A Glib Notion Around That There Was No Reason To Suppose A Bad Man Could Be A Good Writer.

Allow Ourselves To Do As Ram Dass Said In His Delicious Phrase "be Here Now." If You Are Here Now You Cannot Fall Into Falsely Constructed Gender Projections.

I've Always Associated The Moment Of Writing With A Moment Of Lift, Of Joy, Of Unexpected Reward.

Even Though Helen Vendler Wasn't On The Harvard Faculty When I Came First In 1979, She Was A Guardian Spirit; Robert Fitzgerald Gave Me The Use Of His Study In Pusey Library. Monroe And Brenda Engel Kept Open House, Bob And Jana Kiely Made Me At Home In Adams House. Then, Too, In 1979, Frank Bidart, Whom Id Met In Dublin After The Death Of Robert Lowell He Was Over Seeing Caroline Blackwood Frank Brought Me Into His Circle Of Friends, Including Robert Pinsky And Alan Williamson.

Behaviour That's Admired Is The Path To Power Among People Everywhere.

Poetry Is Language In Orbit.

The Appointment [in Harvard] Gave Me Economic Safety, Writerly Support, And Intellectual Self-respectplus Eight Months To Myself Every Year.

Anyone With Gumption And A Sharp Mind Will Take The Measure Of Two Things: What's Said And What's Done.

Two Buckets Were Easier Carried Than One. / I Grew Up In Between.

There Is Risk And Truth To Yourselves And The World Before You.

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