I don't miss teaching. I'm learning to take my time for myself. Seamus Heaney More Quotes by Seamus Heaney More Quotes From Seamus Heaney My teaching was animated by what I was reading and being excited by as a poet. Seamus Heaney excitedreadingteaching 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. Seamus Heaney premonitionseptember-11hands 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. Seamus Heaney anxietyteachingclass 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. Seamus Heaney albatrossafflictionpeople But even so, none of the news of these world-spasms entered me as terror. Seamus Heaney newsterrorworld 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 Seamus Heaney lovelysweetyears 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. Seamus Heaney reliabilitystood-upworld Wherever that man went, he went gratefully. Seamus Heaney men 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. Seamus Heaney scotlandspeechspeak You had to come back to learn how to lose yourself, to be pilot and stray-witch, Hansel and Gretel in one. Seamus Heaney losing-yourselfwitchpilots Poetry is language in orbit. Seamus Heaney orbitpoetryart 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. Seamus Heaney brutalityperceptionmean 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. Seamus Heaney citiesnamesmind The completely solitary self: that's where poetry comes from, and it gets isolated by crisis, and those crises are often very intimate also. Seamus Heaney intimatecrisisself 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. Seamus Heaney finishedreaderway 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. Seamus Heaney hunchesclueodd I shall gain glory or die. Seamus Heaney diesgainsglory In off the moors, down through the mist beams, god-cursed Grendel came greedily loping. Seamus Heaney moorsmistbeam The appointment [in Harvard] gave me economic safety, writerly support, and intellectual self-respectplus eight months to myself every year. Seamus Heaney eightselfyears Harvard created wonderful conditions for me as a writerbut the writing was done, almost entirely, when I got home. Seamus Heaney donehomewriting
