Anyone with gumption and a sharp mind will take the measure of two things: what's said and what's done.
Seamus HeaneyRead
I think the first little jolt I got was reading Gerard Manley Hopkins - I liked other poems... but Hopkins was kind of electric for me - he changed the rules with speech, and the whole intensity of the language was there and so on.
Interpretation
Seamus Heaney expresses how the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins had a profound impact on him, transforming his perception of language and poetry.
In this quote, Seamus Heaney reflects on the transformative power of Hopkins' poetry, describing it as 'electric' and noting how it altered the conventions of language. Heaney emphasizes the intensity and innovative use of speech in Hopkins' work, which inspired him and deepened his appreciation for poetry.
In practice
This quote could be used in a lecture on the influence of poets on each other.
Anyone with gumption and a sharp mind will take the measure of two things: what's said and what's done.
What I've said before, only half in joke, is that everybody in Ireland is famous. Or, maybe better, say everybody is familiar.
The kinds of truth that art gives us many, many times are small truths. They don't have the resonance of an encyclical from the Pope stating an eternal truth, but they partake of the quality of eternity. There is a sort of timeless delight in them.
If self is a location, so is love: Bearings taken, markings, cardinal points, Options, obstinacies, dug heels, and distance, Here and there and now and then, a stance.
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.
I think that water is immediately interesting. It's just, as an element, it is full of life. It is associated with origin; it is bright - it reflects you.
Photography is a brief complicity between foresight and luck.
All forms of art are consciousness expanders, and I am convinced that they will take us further, and more consciously, than drugs.
Van Gogh never made a penny in his entire lifetime. He painted because it was his soul, his excitement. It was what aligned him with his Source of being. It's the same with me and writing.
It is only when you open your veins and bleed onto the page a little that you establish contact with your reader. If you do not believe in the characters or the story you are doing at that moment with all your mind, strength, and will, if you don't feel joy and excitement while writing it, then you're wasting good white paper, even if it sells, because there are other ways in which a writer can bring in the rent money besides writing bad or phony stories.
Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.
the look of the sky as the day's blue blood runs out of its cheek.
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