Seamus Heaney

Friday Thoughts...

How do you tell good poetry from bad? Use the synaesthesia test. Does it invoke multi-sensory visions? Yes? It's good! Seamus Heaney passes the test. 

You can also use the 'Does it make me want to write poetry test?'. Seamus passes again. 

You don't have to show your poetry to anyone. You can leave it in a drawer [that's what I do] or burn it. Like drawing, the act of writing sharpens your consciousness and, even if it doesn't produce anything worth sharing, that enhanced consciousness is of inestimable value.

Then there is the magic test. Does the poetry transmute ordinary experience, by some alchemical process, into something marvelous and sublime? Seamus...you had the Philosopher's Stone!

Earlier looked out at the sunset. A small patch of Cumulus cloud was the colour of Double Gloucester cheese. Next to it was a patch of sky, corn flower blue gradually mutating into turquoise...There were a few minutes of something marvelous and sublime. I wish I could have grabbed and hoarded it...but then dull clouds drifted over and it was gone.

The nights are drawing in and old Seamus has departed.