Séamus Heaney

Apr 14th, 2009 | By Bock | Category: popular culture

Séamus Heaney is 70. 

Happy birthday, Séamus.

9 comments
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  1. Benny the Bridgebuilder April 14th, 2009 9:42 pm

    The greatest poet of our generation. By far. A modest man with deep insights and great feeling.

    I heard him read his own line “casting the stones of silence” the other night on the radio. Could you find a pithier expression of Burke’s axiom on the triumph of evil?

    Magic.

  2. Abbott_Of_Iona April 15th, 2009 1:32 am

    Benny,

    You alreay know it.

    “Let he who has the first………”

  3. Abbott_Of_Iona April 15th, 2009 1:55 am

    Benny,

    I have just linked to your site. I’ll get back to you shortly.

    In the meantime can you explain how

    “I heard him read his own line “casting the stones of silence”

    and then say that,

    “Blessed Bock seems to be already half way there”

    Was Christ in your words. Did you not understand what the poet gave you?

    Do you understand Christ? Do you know what stones are? Do you know what silence is?

    Was that not precisely what Christ was saying.

    “Let he who is without sin cast the first….”

    In short Benny, Christ said all stones are silent because they are not cast.

    Cast no more stones. Try to understand your Christ or at least your poet.

  4. Sean Jeating April 15th, 2009 7:54 am

    Happy birthday, poet! May your muse keep kissing you, and may Pegasus give you good rides.

  5. C'est La Craic April 15th, 2009 4:03 pm

    Abbott
    I’m as big a fan of cryptic comments as the next man, but you comments are becoming increasingly unclear lately. What the fuck are you smoking, and where can I get some?

  6. Benny the Bridgebuilder April 15th, 2009 6:43 pm

    @abbot

    Perhaps I am reading my own meaning into the line. I see it as an amalgam of “cast the first stone”, guilt, cowardice and meaningless token opposition. Having said that I am reminded of the joke “Oh Mother!” No I don’t know the poet, much less than the Christ, but I found the phrase striking and resonant.

    My comment on Blessed Bock being almost there, if I recollect it correctly, related to the homeopathy principle embedded in holy water and presumably being eventually capable of being applied to beer. There are other examples of the pressing into convenient service of the concept of infinity in Roman Catholicism.

    Glad you hit my site.

  7. Benny the Bridgebuilder April 15th, 2009 7:04 pm

    @craic

    You may be on to something.

  8. unstranger April 15th, 2009 8:08 pm

    Heaney writes well and so well his writing sometimes causes tears to fall.

  9. Trinity April 16th, 2009 11:17 am

    Between my finger and my thumb
    The squat pen rests.
    I’ll dig with it.

    (I always loved that line)

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