Seamus Heaney's Influence On American Poetry

Sir Philip Sidney wrote in the Defense of Poesy that “only the poet, disdaining to be tied to any such subjection, lifted up with the vigor of his own invention, doth grow in effect another nature, in making things either better than nature bringeth forth, or quite anew, forms such as never were in nature” (Sidney, bartleby.com). While history describes the actual and philosophy explores the abstract, only poetry is capable of weaving the two concepts together. Reading a nation’s history enlightens an individual to the significant events of a country’s past, but it cannot reveal the immaterial spirit of an era or people. Likewise, it is necessary to look at poetry to perceive the void left vacant by history’s restriction. There have been several

During the post-World War II era, both Robert Lowell and Seamus Heaney emerged as the pre-eminent poets of their day who were thrust into the public forum. The poets are well-known, acquiring Pulitzer and Nobel prizes amongst other accomplishments, and thus are worth analyzing as potential national poets. Historically a national poet fulfills the following criteria: an interest in creating poetry for the public sphere, a focus on the socio-political intricacies of their respective state, and an embodiment and understanding of the collective conscious of their people. Although Robert Lowell and Seamus Heaney were both well known politically concerned, dedicated, celebrated, and criticized poets, through an analysis of their work using the aforementioned criteria, only Heaney emerges as a true national

It is a contradictory art that forces the poet to balance the opposing public and private spheres. Robert Lowell was born in to a prominent American family and from a young age was the subject of public attention. At the age of thirty he cemented his legacy by winning the Pulitzer prize for Lord’s Weary Castle (Pulitzer.org). However, Lowell maintained a sense of unease within his influence a public figurehead for American poetry. Essayist Stephen James expands on this discomfort when he writes “Despite his credentials as a significant public figure—his distinguished American ancestry, his notorious letters rebuking two presidents for their aggressive foreign policies, his imprisonment for conscientious objection, his advocacy for Eugene McCarthy’s presidential bid, his involvement in a protest against the war in Vietnam—Lowell’s verse does not display clear political alignments or affiliations” (James, 11). Lowell maintained and acted in a manner consistent with his pacifistic nature through his various acts of dissent, but he was burdened by his power as a public figure and paralyzed by his perceived ineffectuality. His famous declaration of conscientious objection against the war, is fundamentally a reaction as opposed to an action. The government maintained agency and in turn he was sentenced to a year in prison. His struggle with his inefficacy was magnified by his public presence. Likewise, Lowell will