Anyone with gumption and a sharp mind will take the measure of two things: what's said and what's done.
Seamus HeaneyRead
Tom Sleigh's poetry is hard-earned and well founded. I great admire the way it refuses to cut emotional corners and yet achieves a sense of lyric absolution.
Interpretation
The quote praises Tom Sleigh's poetry for its deep emotional honesty and lyrical quality.
Seamus Heaney's quote highlights Tom Sleigh's approach to poetry, emphasizing the hard work and foundation behind his creations. He admires how Sleigh's poetry engages with complex emotions without avoiding difficult themes, resulting in a rich and cathartic lyrical experience that resonates with readers.
In practice
In a literary discussion about emotional depth in poetry.
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.
A museum should not just be a place for fancy paintings but should be a place where we can communicate our lives through our everyday objects.
Fashion is the science of appearance, and it inspires one with the desire to seem rather than to be.
Typography is the craft of endowing human language with a durable visual form, and thus with an independent existence. Its heartwood is calligraphy - the dance, on a tiny stage, of the living, speaking hand - and its roots reach into living soil, though its branches may be hung each year with new machines. So long as the root lives, typography remains a source of true delight, true knowledge, true surprise.
I've always believed that a dance evening energizes an audience, that an audience goes out feeling chemically stronger and more optimistic. This is what I understand about dance. And this is an important thing. We need this. Our culture needs it.
One must withdraw for a time from life in order to set down that picture.
It wasn't just about doing tricks. It's about taking an audience to another place, a special place, so they can really suspend their disbelief. Its about amazing the audience as well as moving them.
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