From the Back Cover

“When I first saw Seamus at that poetry reading in Cambridge, I saw him as justly celebrated author of a number of poems that had stirred me. My excitement was also, it’s true, a kind of confusion. Confusion – and this is maybe a bit exaggerated – between my experience of the poems, which are felt to be somehow outside ordinary time, and the slightly rumpled physical immediacy of their maker. But I remind myself – and believe, if only to preserve my self-esteem – that, confusion or no, the primary attraction was finally less the fact of his public notoriety and more that he was the man who had written these many great poems. As soon as the meeting happened, the acquaintance – and the eventual friendship, of course – the distinction grew blurred. But on the far side of the complex assessment of motives, intents and incentives, I believe things were clear enough. After all, here was the basis of the mattering of literature.”

from “Seamus Heaney: Notes on Fame and Friendship” by Sven Birkerts