Among the many tributes to the late Irish poet Seamus Heaney, a remembrance from Henri Cole stands out:
A poet must remain, no matter the cost, “open,” experiencing, if possible, both sides of any debate—whether it be with one’s government, or with one’s beloved, or with one’s self. And so it is no surprise that Heaney’s “Opened Ground” ends with that word—“open”—for this is the necessary condition of any authentic, great poet. But “How to be socially responsible and creatively free, while being true to the negative evidence of history?” This is the question Heaney was always struggling to answer while making poems of aesthetic beauty and converting the roughness of our human experiences into complex harmonies…
To me, Heaney’s title, “Opened Ground,” also suggests that something is being exhumed and examined, as if from a grave. It reveals a man refusing to be sentimental as he digs around and extracts truths from his soul and from the world. Whenever I read a Heaney poem, I am reminded of Wordsworth’s “The Prelude,” where he looks out over the side of the boat at still water, solacing himself, and sees the gleam of his own image mixing up with pebbles, roots, rocks, and sky. Time, history, thought, and self all merge in an alluring way—exactly as they do in Heaney’s best poems, where, after he has been digging, there is germination and a flowering.
Read the poems the Dish has been running to honor Heaney after his death here, here, and here.
The Dish 