Word: heaneys
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Without notice, without segue, Heaney then swerved rather powerfully towards a justification of poetry. Having grown and matured against the background of shootings, bombings and strikes in northern Ireland, Heaney is no stranger to political conflict and the demands of civic responsibility. Heaney admits that in the face of such peril, poetry seems like “arbitrary, pleasure-seeking shape-making.” And it is. What seemed to baffle the audience was that this doesn’t trouble...
...Heaney has written much in the way of political poetry over the years, such as his reflection on the Troubles, “Whatever You Say, Say Nothing,” in his 1975 collection, North. But his political poems are surprisingly unpolitical. They provide journalistic responses to major events rather than rallying cries for partisan action. But if you’re a monumental figure of ethics no less than poetics, as Heaney is, the pressures from both sides to take a stance are stifling...
...Heaney has long wanted to be a poet rather than propagandist. So is it surprising that he takes pleasure in “escaping the shackles of the civic”? On the other hand, in times of conflict, Heaney acknowledges that there can be “more reliability in the poetic than the actual,” making poetry a source of strength through dire straits. Indeed, Heaney invokes T.S. Eliot’s conviction that “public activity is more of a drug than this solitary toil [of writing] that often seems so pointless...
...seemed sometimes that Heaney was too quick to disparage the political in defense of the poetic, he was redeemed in the end by a president. In a 1995 speech, former President Bill Clinton claimed that some of his favorite lines were an extra chorus that Heaney wrote into his version of Sophocles’ Philoctetes...
There’s nothing really apolitical about Heaney or his “longed for tidal wave of justice,” just something unpartisan. And while Heaney might not rock the vote, his words are inspiring enough to have hung (as they did) on Clinton‘s White House study walls...