The Importance of Exile in the Poetry of Seamus HeaneyBeing a poet in a culture obsessed with politics is a risky business. Associating poetry with the heavy burden of public significance only hinders its flight: however tempting it may be to employ one's poetic talent in the service of a program or an ideology, the result is generally not great. -something to do with poetry. This is not to condemn the so-called “commitment literature”; Revealing and revelatory, he has fulfilled his role in the unfinished history of our century, and this is certainly not the time to call for the poet's retreat into the "ivory tower" of himself. Preserving the individual voice in the midst of an amorphous collective and at all levels must be the first act of the poetic will, a springboard from which each poet must begin the poetic effort. A quick glance at Ireland's recent history is enough to show where this preservation is particularly difficult. The pressures that divided Irish society exerts on its poets are enormous: taking a political position is no longer a temptation (it implies a certain luxury of choice on the part of those tempted) but rather an unavoidable reality imposed by the agora of discourse audience. Thus, the condition of exile becomes the poet's only way out, the only way to preserve the autonomy of his poetic voice. However, more than a simple survival tactic, it is a strategy aimed at finding one's home "elsewhere", whether in the original language of the island (and of today's minority). hui), as in the case of Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, or in the broader reality of poetry. imagination. Seamus Heaney, who occupies the precarious position of being Ireland's most famous and accomplished living poet while refusing to become its bard, draws our attention to the role of the ex...... middle of paper......Beckett, Samuel. Murphy. New York: Grove Press, 1957. Haviaras, Stratis, ed. Seamus Heaney: A celebration. A Harvard Review monograph. 1996. Heaney, Seamus. Crediting poetry: the Nobel conference. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995.---. The government of language: selected prose 1978-1987. New York: Farrar, Strausand Giroux, 1989.---. Selected poems 1966-1987. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1990. Kiberd, Declan. Inventing Ireland: The Literature of the Modern Nation. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995. Malloy, Catharine and Phyllis Carey, eds. Seamus Heaney: The Shaping Mind. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1996. Said, Edward W. “Intellectual Exile: Expatriates and Margins.” Grand Street 47 (1993): 113-124. Welch, Robert. Changing States: Transformations in Modern Irish Writing. London: Routledge, 1993.