The man, Seamus Heaney

This man has been dead for just over two weeks. Why not take this opportunity, right now, to meet him?

Say Hello to Seamus Heaney. This guy is a poet. I know what you’re thinking.

Before you panic, shutting off your computer and screaming bloody murder, bare with me. He’s a master. He took words and transformed them into moments, and he did it so well that he got a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995. And, oh… won 17 other major international prizes and honors…while teaching at Harvard and Oxford…still not impressed?

Seamus Heaney was not just a great poet but he was regarded by some as the “greatest poet of our age” and the ”the most important Irish poet since Yeats“.

So… what made him so good?

Poetry tugs on those good ol’ heart strings. Heaney, like the best poets, wanted us to watch and feel with him. He wanted us to be appalled, to be inspired, by what we see through his words.

Most folks may not be familiar with Heaney’s brilliance because schools traditionally treat poetry like its only purpose is to accurately describe the woods (snowy woods, yellow wood, sorry Robert Frost). But words are personal and powerful. In the hands of someone like Heaney, poetry could be a weapon.

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

- from “Digging”

Who knows, the next Seamus Heaney might exist right now, a young Syrian girl, documenting the most intense moments into reality on paper. Her words could change history, or at least, record it in the most human way possible. 

Will educators see the potential? Can poetry be a weapon? Do you still want to shut off your computer and scream?