| Recent criticism of the poetry of Seamus Heaney suggests a lack of consensus as to whether he writes public poetry. He has been accused of being apolitical and reticent; nationalist and outspoken. These antithetical judgments arise from equating public poetry with what Heaney describes as crisis poetry: poetry couched in topical terms that verges on becoming propaganda or poster poetry. In contrast, Heaney defines public poetry as "a meditated, mediated utterance" (Montenegro 185) that appeals to collective feelings, binding the poet and the community together in a response to an event or situation. In order to satisfy his beliefs about public poetry and his reluctance to become a bardic spokesman, Heaney creates poetry that is often subversive, oblique, and covert, the public nature of which is revealed by examining his use of place in its widest sense, encompassing landscape, history, language, and personal relationships. Although in his public poetry Heaney adopts the covert strategies employed by post-colonial poets and Eastern European poets, he continues also the autobiographical tradition of Wordsworth's public poetry. In both his prose and his poetry, Heaney struggles and succeeds in producing public rather than crisis poetry. |
