The poet is on the side of undeceiving the world. Seamus Heaney More Quotes by Seamus Heaney More Quotes From Seamus Heaney 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. Seamus Heaney orthodoxy different common 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. Seamus Heaney unexpected matter facts The gift of writing is to be self-forgetful... Seamus Heaney forgetful self writing As writers and readers, as sinners and citizens, our realism and our aesthetic sense make us wary of crediting the positive note. Seamus Heaney notes citizens reality There is risk and truth to yourselves and the world before you. Seamus Heaney risk world 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. Seamus Heaney dream writing night I credit poetry for making this space-walk possible. Seamus Heaney credit walks space Write whatever you like! Seamus Heaney writing Sink every impulse like a bolt. Secure The bastion of sensation. Do not waver Into language. Do not waver in it. Seamus Heaney impulse secure language Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests; snug as a gun. ~from the poem "Digging Seamus Heaney digging thumbs gun I always believed that whatever had to be written would somehow get itself written. Seamus Heaney written Strange, it is a huge nothing that we fear. Seamus Heaney strange huge 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. Seamus Heaney ireland-and-the-irish political fire The ability to start out upon your own impulse is Seamus Heaney fundamentals inspirational art Without needing to be theoretically instructed, consciousness quickly realizes that it is the site of variously contending discourses. Seamus Heaney site realizing consciousness 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. Seamus Heaney forgiveness revenge believe The dotted line my father's ashplant made On Sandymount Strand Is something else the tide won't wash away. Seamus Heaney tides lines father If self is a location, so is love. Seamus Heaney location ifs self 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 Seamus Heaney achievement self-esteem art 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. Seamus Heaney circles house home
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