Seamus Heaney
Irish · 1939–2013
Nobel laureate poet from Northern Ireland whose work unearthed the deep strata of Irish history, language, and landscape, making the act of poetry itself a form of archaeological recovery and moral reckoning.
Wikipedia ↗“Between my finger and my thumb the squat pen rests; snug as a gun. I'll dig with it.”
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“I rhyme to see myself, to set the darkness echoing.”
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“All I know is a door into the dark. Outside, old axles and iron hoops rusting; inside, the hammered anvil's short-pitched ring, the unpredictable fantail of sparks.”
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“The poet is stretched between politics and transcendence, and is often displaced from a confidence in a single position by his disposition to attend to all positions.”
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“History says, Don't hope on this side of the grave. But then, once in a lifetime, the longed-for tidal wave of justice can rise up, and hope and history rhyme.”
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“The end of art is peace. In the long run, poetry's special task is to offset the world's weight — not by avoiding it, but by redressing it, by offering a counterweight.”
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“If you have the words, there's always a chance that you'll find the way. The right words in the right order can do everything: console, accuse, record, make you laugh, make you cry, provide understanding.”
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