Takers and Makers: Heaney's View on Two Poetic Modes
Takers and Makers: Heaney's View on Two Poetic Modes

Summary/Abstract: Two of Seamus Heaney's poems - 'Glanmore Sonnets (II)' and 'Elegy', and a number of his essays, are analysed in order to abstract and formulate the poet's theory about the two principal poetic modes. The difference between the takers and the makers, i.e., the 'feminine' and the 'masculine' poets, is in their attitude to the sources of creativity and to experience in general. It is demonstrated how the former yield to the flow of energy inherent in nature and the unconscious, which they regard as mysteries never to be completely divined. The latter, on the other hand, tend to bring the initial creative impulse under greater conscious control, illuminating and rationalizing the 'raw material' of their poetry. The paper also discusses formal and stylistic features of the two modes, as well as Heaney's own creed in this context.

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