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As writers and readers, as sinners and citizens, our realism and our aesthetic sense make us wary of crediting the positive note.

Seamus Heaney

I credit poetry for making this space-walk possible.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Myself Possible Space Walk
There’s never going to be a united Ireland, you know.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Country Known Unity Yourself
Poetry is more a threshold than a path.
SEAMUS HEANEY

One Liner Path Poetry
In Northern Ireland, helicopters are not usually used to promote poetry.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Poetry Promotion
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 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
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
Eternal life can mean utter reverence for life itself.
SEAMUS HEANEY

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

Believe Civilization Improvement
Even if the last move did not succeed, the inner command says move again.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Command Move Success
History says, ‘Don’t hope on this side of the grave.’
SEAMUS HEANEY

Grave History Hope Side
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
The Ireland I now inhabit is one that these Irish contemporaries have helped to imagine.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Help Imagination Myself
My father and mother had no sense of entitlement for their children.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Children Father Mom Myself
I suppose you could say my father’s world was Thomas Hardy and my mother’s D.H. Lawrence.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Father Myself World
I always believed that whatever had to be written would somehow get itself written.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Believe Myself Writing

As writers and readers, as sinners and citizens, our realism and our aesthetic sense make us wary of crediting the positive note.

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Popular Authors

As writers and readers, as sinners and citizens, our realism and our aesthetic sense make us wary of crediting the positive note.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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