Seamus Heaney
Poet
1939-04-13 – 2013-08-30
Seamus Heaney was an Irish poet, playwright, and translator and winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. His work includes Death of a Naturalist and North.
Books by Seamus Heaney
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Beowulf
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Death of a naturalist
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Quotes by Seamus Heaney
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The way we are living,timorous or bold,will have been our life.
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DiggingBetween my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.Under my window, a clean rasping sound When the spade sinks into gravelly ground: My father, digging. I look downTill his straining rump among the flowerbeds Bends low, comes up twenty years away Stooping in rhythm through potato drills Where he was digging.The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft Against the inside knee was levered firmly.He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deepTo scatter new potatoes that we picked,Loving their cool hardness in our hands.By God, the old man could handle a spade. Just like his old man.My grandfather cut more turf in a dayThan any other man on Toner's bog.Once I carried him milk in a bottleCorked sloppily with paper. He straightened upTo drink it, then fell to right awayNicking and slicing neatly, heaving sodsOver his shoulder, going down and downFor the good turf. Digging.The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slapOf soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edgeThrough living roots awaken in my head.But I've no spade to follow men like them.Between my finger and my thumbThe squat pen rests.I'll dig with it.
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The main thing is to writefor the joy of it. Cultivate a work-lustthat imagines its haven like your hands at nightdreaming the sun in the sunspot of a breast.You are fasted now, light-headed, dangerous.Take off from here.
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Since when, he asked,Are the first line and last line of any poemWhere the poem begins and ends?
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He sits, strong and blunt as a Celtic cross, Clearly used to silence and an armchair: Tonight the wife and children will be quiet At slammed door and smoker's cough in the hall.
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I suppose I'm saying that defiance is actually part of the lyric job
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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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I rhymeTo see myself, to set the darkness echoing.
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All I know is a door into the dark
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There is risk and truth to yourselves and the world before you.
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If you have the words, there's always a chance that you'll find the way.
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History says, Don't hopeOn this side of the grave,But then, once in a lifetimeThe longed-for tidal waveOf justice can rise up,And hope and history rhyme
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It is always betterto avenge dear ones than to indulge in mourning.For every one of us, living in this worldmeans waiting for our end. Let whoever canwin glory before death. When a warrior is gone,that will be his best and only bulwark.
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Since when, he asked,Are the first line and last line of any poemWhere the poem begins and ends?
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He sits, strong and blunt as a Celtic cross, Clearly used to silence and an armchair: Tonight the wife and children will be quiet At slammed door and smoker's cough in the hall.
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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.
Read quote -
DiggingBetween my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.Under my window, a clean rasping sound When the spade sinks into gravelly ground: My father, digging. I look downTill his straining rump among the flowerbeds Bends low, comes up twenty years away Stooping in rhythm through potato drills Where he was digging.The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft Against the inside knee was levered firmly.He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deepTo scatter new potatoes that we picked,Loving their cool hardness in our hands.By God, the old man could handle a spade. Just like his old man.My grandfather cut more turf in a dayThan any other man on Toner's bog.Once I carried him milk in a bottleCorked sloppily with paper. He straightened upTo drink it, then fell to right awayNicking and slicing neatly, heaving sodsOver his shoulder, going down and downFor the good turf. Digging.The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slapOf soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edgeThrough living roots awaken in my head.But I've no spade to follow men like them.Between my finger and my thumbThe squat pen rests.I'll dig with it.
Read quote -
All I know is a door into the dark
Read quote -
There is risk and truth to yourselves and the world before you.
Read quote -
If you have the words, there's always a chance that you'll find the way.
Read quote