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The kind of poet who founds and reconstitutes values is somebody like Yeats or Whitman – these are public value-founders.

Seamus Heaney

I believe we are put here to improve civilisation.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Believe Civilization Improvement
Write whatever you like!
SEAMUS HEANEY

Advice Writing
In the United States, in poetry workshops, it’s now quite a thing to make graduate students learn poems by heart.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Learning Poem Poetry Quite Student Workshop
Poetry is always slightly mysterious, and you wonder what is your relationship to it.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Mystery Poetry Relationship Slight
The problem as you get older, is that you become more self-aware. At the same time, you have to surprise yourself. There’s no way of arranging the surprise, so it is tricky.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Arrangement Aware Old Problem Trick
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
Poetry is what we do to break bread with the dead.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Break Death Poetry
Poetry is more a threshold than a path.
SEAMUS HEANEY

One Liner Path Poetry
My father was a creature of the archaic world, really. He would have been entirely at home in a Gaelic hill-fort. His side of the family, and the houses I associate with his side of the family, belonged to a traditional rural Ireland.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Associate Creature Family Father Traditional World
Without needing to be theoretically instructed, consciousness quickly realizes that it is the site of variously contending discourses.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Conscious Instruction Need Realize
Even if the last move did not succeed, the inner command says move again.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Command Move Success
Memory has always been fundamental for me. In fact, remembering what I had forgotten is the way most of the poems get started.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Fundamental Memories Myself Poem Start
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
You can have Irish identity in the north and also have your Irish passport.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Identify Passport Yourself
I’ve been in the habit of helping people.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Habit Help Myself People
If you go into an underground train in London – probably anywhere, but chiefly in London – there’s that sense of almost entering a ghostly dimension. People are very still and quiet; they don’t exchange many pleasantries.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Dimension Ghost People Pleasant Quiet Training Yourself

The kind of poet who founds and reconstitutes values is somebody like Yeats or Whitman – these are public value-founders.

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The kind of poet who founds and reconstitutes values is somebody like Yeats or Whitman – these are public value-founders.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Seamus Heaney Quotes