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PAUL SIMON’S HEARTFELT tribute to Seamus Heaney appeared on the New York Times website on the day of the poet’s death last Friday. The piece, in which the songwriter speaks of Heaney’s “verbal virtuosity, his wit and Irish charm” has been getting renewed attention on Twitter in Ireland today as may people read it for the first time.
Simon, a frequent visitor to Ireland, speaks of his visits to the poet’s home in Dublin, and the pair’s “continued conversations at my place in Manhattan”.
He describes Heaney as “one of those rare poets whose writing evokes music”:
Popular culture likes to house songwriters and poets under the same roof, but we are not the close family that some imagine. Poets are distant cousins at most, and labor under a distinctly different set of rules. Songwriters have melody, instrumentation and rhythm to color their work and give it power; poets accomplish it all with words.
Simon writes of Heaney’s “directness and simplicity”, describing it as “a virtue most writers aspire to but rarely achieve”.
And he touches on how the Nobel laureate maintained his grace and good humour in his later days spite of health problems:
Recovering from a stroke in the hospital, he greeted his friend and fellow poet Paul Muldoon with, “Hello, different strokes for different folks.”
Simon ends the piece with the simple tribute:
Obviously, I’m a fan even more of the man than the poetry, though there are few poets I would rank as his equal.
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How can you follow that praise. Beautiful
Very well said Leslie.
With smiley face. not a lol, a smiley face
Surely we should name the new bridge or the Airport after him. Celebrate his uniqueness that will never be seen again! R.I.P. Seamus
A good idea Emmet but would the man himself want that? he seemed a humble and down to earth man.. maybe a Seamus Heaney Shcool of Poetry, or an annual poets award named after him? The great man will be remembered as one of our greatest.
Good idea.
I like the idea of naming bridges, airports, buildings etc after Artists.
Can you imagine if the Liffey Bridges were named:
Wilde, Heaney, Stoker, Kavanagh, Yeats etc.
A statue of Beckett, instead of the ‘Spire’.
:)
Words are like stones! It’s only when they are put in place do they build the castle. Seamus picked the stones from his father’s straight furrows and built them into castles. Simon picked his words and wore them on the soles of his shoes. They are both craftsmen
Nicely done
Still crazy after all these years
Simon is a poet sublime in his own right. His music is embellishment for his poetry
It would bring a tear to a glass eye.
Top fella
: ‘The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it.’ Walt Whitman
Amen Séamus..
A verbal memory of Ireland.
Didn’t realize the two had a connection. Nice touch.
“A pilgrim on a pilgrimage / walked across the Brooklyn Bridge”
Paul Simon is rightly in awe of Seamus Heaney, a lovely tribute …
And now he lies buried with his cousins the bould Thomas McElwee and Francis Hughes
So was Heaney the boy in the bubble, because I certainly didn’t picture him with diamonds on the soles of his shoes.
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