Two buckets were easier carried than one. / I grew up in between. 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 excited reading teaching 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 premonition september-11 hands 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 anxiety teaching class 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 albatross affliction people But even so, none of the news of these world-spasms entered me as terror. Seamus Heaney news terror world 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 lovely sweet years 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 reliability stood-up world 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 scotland speech speak 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-yourself witch pilots Poetry is language in orbit. Seamus Heaney orbit poetry art 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 brutality perception mean 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 cities names mind 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 intimate crisis self 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 finished reader way 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 hunches clue odd I shall gain glory or die. Seamus Heaney dies gains glory In off the moors, down through the mist beams, god-cursed Grendel came greedily loping. Seamus Heaney moors mist beam The appointment [in Harvard] gave me economic safety, writerly support, and intellectual self-respectplus eight months to myself every year. Seamus Heaney eight self years Harvard created wonderful conditions for me as a writerbut the writing was done, almost entirely, when I got home. Seamus Heaney done home writing
