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I don’t think my intelligence is naturally analytic or political.

Seamus Heaney

Tom Sleigh’s poetry is hard-earned and well founded. I great admire the way it refuses to cut emotional corners and yet achieves a sense of lyric absolution.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Absolute Admire Greatness Lyrics Poetry
The kinds of truth that art gives us many, many times are small truths. They don’t have the resonance of an encyclical from the Pope stating an eternal truth, but they partake of the quality of eternity. There is a sort of timeless delight in them.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Art Eternity Forever Kind Quality Small Time Truth
One doesn’t want one’s identity coerced.
SEAMUS HEANEY

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

Association Expectation Moments Reward
One of the best descriptions of the type of writer I am was given by Tom Paulin, who described himself as a ‘binge’ writer – like a binge drinker. I go on binges.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Best Description Himself Myself Writing
I think of Dermot Healy as the heir to Patrick Kavanagh.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Myself Thinking
Even if the last move did not succeed, the inner command says move again.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Command Move Success
The faking of feelings is a sin against the imagination.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Deep Fake Feeling Imagination Sin
Poetry is more a threshold than a path.
SEAMUS HEANEY

One Liner Path Poetry
I think the first little jolt I got was reading Gerard Manley Hopkins – I liked other poems… but Hopkins was kind of electric for me – he changed the rules with speech, and the whole intensity of the language was there and so on.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Intense Language Myself Poem Reading Talk Thinking
In a war situation or where violence and injustice are prevalent, poetry is called upon to be something more than a thing of beauty.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Beautiful Injustice Situation Violence
I don’t think my intelligence is naturally analytic or political.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Intelligence Natural Politics Thinking
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
My father and mother had no sense of entitlement for their children.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Children Father Mom Myself
The Heaneys were aristocrats, in the sense that they took for granted a code of behavior that was given and unspoken. Argumentation, persuasion, speech itself, for God’s sake, just seemed otiose and superfluous to them.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Argument Aristocrats Behavior God Talk
You can have Irish identity in the north and also have your Irish passport.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Identify Passport Yourself

I don’t think my intelligence is naturally analytic or political.

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I don’t think my intelligence is naturally analytic or political.

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