black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

It’s difficult to learn poems off by heart that don’t rhyme.

Seamus Heaney

I’ve always associated the moment of writing with a moment of lift, of joy, of unexpected reward.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Association Expectation Moments Reward
The group of writers I had grown up with in the ’60s – Derek Mahon, Michael Longley, James Simmons, John Hewitt, Paul Muldoon – formed a very necessary and self-sustaining group.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Group Necessary Sustainable Writing
My experience is that prose usually equals duty – last minute, overdue-deadline stuff or a panic lecture to be written.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Equal Evidence Experience Writing
My language and my sensibility are yearning to admit a kind of religious or transcendent dimension. But then there’s the reality: there’s no Heaven, no afterlife of the sort we were promised, and no personal God.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Dimension God Language Personal Promise Reality Yearning
History says, ‘Don’t hope on this side of the grave.’
SEAMUS HEANEY

Grave History Hope Side
There is risk and truth to yourselves and the world before you.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Risk Truth World Yourself
I’m a firm believer in learning by heart.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Believe Heart Learning
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

Brutal Change Citizenship Destruction Perception Possible Pursue Recognition
It is very true to say that work done by writers is quite often an attempt to give solid expression to that which is bothering them. They feel they have got it right if they express the stress.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Expression Solid Stress True Work Writing
The murder of Sean Brown hurt my soul.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Hurt Murder Myself Soul
Poetry is a domestic art, most itself when most at home.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Art Domestic Home Poetry
Eternal life can mean utter reverence for life itself.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Forever Life
At home in Ireland, there’s a habit of avoidance, an ironical attitude towards the authority figure.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Attitude Authority Avoid Figure Habit Home
In fact, in lyric poetry, truthfulness becomes recognizable as a ring of truth within the medium itself.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Fact Lyrics Medium Poetry Recognition Truth
Sonnet is about movement in a form.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Form Movement One Liner
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.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Empowerment Expectation Forget Gift Writing Yourself

It’s difficult to learn poems off by heart that don’t rhyme.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

It’s difficult to learn poems off by heart that don’t rhyme.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Seamus Heaney Quotes