Key Points: Seamus Heaneys Justification in Seeking Redress of Poetry

1) The subject that Seamus Heaney has treated, the redress of poetry, is not a new subject.
2) The question is that whether, poetry is a useful activity in society; whether poetry is an aesthetic
or a pragmatic work.
3) There have been a lot of discussions whether poets and poetry are of any use in the complexities
and miseries of life or not some are of the view that the poets are worthless people and some
condemned them as idle people. As Plato is among the haters of poets and poetry. He had
banished the poets from his Republic.
4) Aristotle was of the view that the poets are essential to keep balance in society and they took us
towards the ideal. Sydney asserted that The poet takes us to the ideal. Oscar wild said that life
should imitate art because art presents the perfect.
5) Heaney makes a fresh attempt to defend poetry in this age of science and technology.
6) Heaney is of the opinion that the world of reality and the world of imagination are two different
worlds but they depend upon each other and they reinforce each other and this is the subject of
his poem Squarings.
7) Seamus Heaney defends poetry on the ground of utility also.
8) Poetry can very pleasantly and easily explore the subjects which are generally denied by social,
racial, sexual, and political prejudices and all this is done through the linguistic medium.
9) Poetry does not force man to go and fight. But poetry shows what is wrong and what is right. If
poetry becomes practical, according to Heaney, it will not remain poetry, it will become
propaganda.
10) Moreover, Poetry is about man. Poetry promotes, love of men. Poetry shows that all men are
human beings and they deserve sympathy.
11) Heaney raises an interesting point here which is also shared by Edward Said in Culture and
Imperialism that the sensibility of the people of the colonies is coloured by the sensibility of the
imperial masters.
12) To conclude, Heaney tries to demonstrate that poetry has a function in life, though not
ostentatious. The poet does nothing on purpose, but poetry is a medium which by its very nature
serves a purpose. He emphasizes that poets should elevate their services on universal level and
poetry should be above all racial, social and political prejudices. This is how he evaluates brighter
sides and aspects of poetry in his essay Redress of Poetry.

Quotes: Seamus Heaneys Justification in Seeking Redress of Poetry

1) The poet takes us to the ideal (Sydney)

2) Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the World. (Sydney)
3) 'Art does not make peace. That is not its business. Art is peace.'' (Lowell snapped)
4) Poetry cannot afford to lose its fundamentally self-delighting inventiveness, its joy in being a
process of language as well as a representation of things in the world.
5) I can't think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is they change people's
understanding of what's going on in the world.
6) The poem ... is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful. And in the end, the
poem is not a thing we see -- it is, rather, a light by which we may see -- and what we see is life.
7) A poem is the very image of life expressed in its eternal truth.
8)