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At home in Ireland, there's a habit of avoidance, an ironical attitude towards the authority figure.

Seamus Heaney

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Seamus Heaney
Age: 74 †
Born: 1939
Born: April 13
Died: 2013
Died: August 30
Actor
Author
Linguist
Playwright
Poet
Translator
University Teacher
Writer
Seamus Justin Heaney
Seamus Heaney
Towards
Figure
Figures
Authority
Habit
Attitude
Ironical
Home
Avoidance
Ireland

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I might enjoy being an albatross, being able to glide for days and daydream for hundreds of miles along the thermals. And then being able to hang like an affliction round some people's necks.
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The completely solitary self: that's where poetry comes from, and it gets isolated by crisis, and those crises are often very intimate also.
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Wherever that man went, he went gratefully.
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When I first encountered the name of the city of Stockholm, I little thought that I would ever visit it, never mind end up being welcomed to it as a guest of the Swedish Academy and the Nobel Foundation.
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I rhyme… to see myself, to set the darkness echoing.
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Sink every impulse like a bolt. Secure The bastion of sensation. Do not waver Into language. Do not waver in it.
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The aim of poetry and the poet is finally to be of service, to ply the effort of the individual into the larger work of the community as a whole.
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Now it’s high watermark and floodtide in the heart and time to go. The sea-nymphs in the spray will be the chorus now. What’s left to say? Suspect too much sweet-talk but never close your mind. It was a fortunate wind that blew me here. I leave half-ready to believe that a crippled trust might walk and the half-true rhyme is love.
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So hope for a great sea-change on the far side of revenge. Believe that further shore is reachable from here. Believe in miracles and cures and healing wells.
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I suppose I'm saying that defiance is actually part of the lyric job
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If you have the words, there's always a chance that you'll find the way.
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I've nothing against the Queen personally: I had lunch at the Palace once upon a time.
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Walk on air against your better judgement.
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Memory has always been fundamental for me. In fact, remembering what I had forgotten is the way most of the poems get started.
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Harvard created wonderful conditions for me as a writerbut the writing was done, almost entirely, when I got home.
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Two buckets were easier carried than one. / I grew up in between.
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I can't think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is they change people's understanding of what's going on in the world.
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