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The fact of the matter is that the most unexpected and miraculous thing in my life was the arrival in it of poetry itself – as a vocation and an elevation almost.

Seamus Heaney

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

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

Help Imagination Myself
The faking of feelings is a sin against the imagination.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Deep Fake Feeling Imagination Sin
In Northern Ireland, helicopters are not usually used to promote poetry.
SEAMUS HEANEY

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

Association Expectation Moments Reward
A person from Northern Ireland is naturally cautious.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Caution Natural Person
In my early teens, I acquired a kind of representative status: went on behalf of the family to wakes and funerals and so on. And I would be counted on as an adult contributor when it came to farm work – the hay in the summertime, for example.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Family Farm Funeral Kind Representation Work
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
Your temperament is what you write with, but it’s also how you deal with the world.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Deal Temperature World Writing
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
In poetry, everything can be faked but the intensity of utterance.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Fake Intense Poetry Utter
Anyone born and bred in Northern Ireland can’t be too optimistic.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Born Optimistic
Even if the hopes you started out with are dashed, hope has to be maintained.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Hope Maintain Start Yourself
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.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Difficult Heart Learning Rhyme
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 fact of the matter is that the most unexpected and miraculous thing in my life was the arrival in it of poetry itself – as a vocation and an elevation almost.

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The fact of the matter is that the most unexpected and miraculous thing in my life was the arrival in it of poetry itself – as a vocation and an elevation almost.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Seamus Heaney Quotes