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Parisa is a blog buddy whose enthusiasm for the Mossbawn magus, seamus Heaney, i share as he is simply the best around, in person and print. At any time there is usually one about the place setting the tempo, and he who needs no introduction or naming - nameless sidhe of Kavanagh and yeats - one who lives it as, i think is fair to suggest, the one most likely to garner the appellation of contemporary Bard from across the board away from his Home here.

However on home turf, many will not concur with what others elsewhere accept unquestioningly; that this man alone is bog-touched by Ogma and Erc, Amergin and the unknown homeric work, the Eternal:

"unity of being"

an anonymous concept yeats dreamed up in the socio-psychic blueprint he wrote for himself as point and guider, universal coda invoking craic with noght but his Imagination. Like Hopkins did with the "inscape" system; much less well known, though just as relevant a Poetic, to him as in an audience the size of Yeats; heaney a class act who broke the mould, and in my opinion, set it straighter than ever it was before. For the first time we had an educated "native" irish voice in the collective bog-sense yeats could never share as heaney does, nor elucidate; because it is that of a class yeats went on about in his own personal mumbo-jumbo to self, the "peasant".

Heaney is the rarest and first of breeds, the real thing, poet teacher sourced in the one incontrovertible source of a pure strain in the native appearance. Heaney's face itself the contributing guarantee of his poetic pass to a singular celtic world yeats was never part of; being the fruit of planter stock who only had a few generations to invent himself with. Heaney, you can tell by the look of him, his people have been on this island far longer than the souls who contributed to silly willy's mob of aristocracy counterpointing the Dream ireland Heaney's immesne gift equals and, imho, surpasses, certainly in the critical prose i found/find practical help with, as colleague of he who needs no naming. Mr famous points out in his essay on Yeats, first "native" english writing bard who reconnected in the modern era and wrote, for the first time, an English language poetry which set out a stall so exotic and strange to, what until then had been the native English speaking palette; back then, in the crossover of centuries of era, time whose tableaux of spirits sing, included Ez Pound, who sought Bill out with a pathological fervor bordering on the tedius, perfectly poetic and True to ez in 1912 when he and Will fenced in Stone Cottage oxford, and ez was amanuensis after acknowledging WB the real Butler being not quite the God some think as know not Silly willy as well as maude gonne did, and who all the rest of the craking gang back then when everyone was at it, being mystic.

As one career sazzy carol rumens sagely informs us, our classical learning worlds of poetic outcome are a billion zillion light years distant from what the kids jangle on in pm and text today and attemot not to pass as the contemporary Poetic; particularly in the potential future star of all things Prophetic in words maybe, i dunno, but i do suppose what it is, is that he who shall remain nameless, is the first native poet who beat the Bloomsbury bores at their own game on his terms and proves himself right as he writes earning a rhyme tu-whitt tu-wooing in the woods searching for clues to who he is armed only with a pen and scholarly scrupulousness practiced since he began as the eldest of nine from Mossbawn farm, Castledawson, Anahorish and borders in tongues of order and governance so finely nuanced only the full erudition an innate poet transliterates in Form, style and all sorts of important self-made rules of engagement with this mystic Art some purport to practice, with varying degrees of success and I imagine at first when he who shall remain nameless in the Group kicked it all off with Longley, Mahon and co up the North, first shairng their Dream in an expert metricist mob of young academic Irishmen, aided by perhaps one of the finest technical critters, Philip Hobsbaum; whose prose proves he knows his feet i think; and his protege's prose, when i first read it, is unsurpassed by any other critical voice his peers have practiced writing in.

He is at number one in prose, poetry and person. There can be only one and it is him, on top with the full four cycles memorised i bet, washing through the troubles he found his way of speaking through in tounges of order governing his notion of selfhood as that younger man, the first "native" one whose Unity of Being yeats banged on about but failed to articulate in print in the way heaney so effortlessly achieves. Heaney's Dream has risen as far and lit as bright Yeats, and with much less shiny song and dance of "moi" than Yeats goes in for.

Yeats always wanted and got it all and heaney too perhaps, but in connection to a Dream they shared as the two poets - one born only months after the other left in bleakest winter on the cusp of war he predicted perhaps as the crawling beast of diabolical abode - with Kavanagh in the trinity just on his way into a Palace Bar and the few disastrously short sojourns, not only to his second home of Fleet Street in Dublin where the Palace Bar still dominates for all writers in Dublin practicing today who are serious about Poetry; but also as contender in one across the water in London, whose mystic spirit yeats will was bark and bole with AE; back in the day they were doing 24 hour a day visionary things; AE - Yeats's personal mystic, Kavanagh a long lean middle path, had to wait for the bay sweater, till the Bell recognition of his greatness came close to a posthumous conferral of a shadowy laurel appellation Kanavanagh at least crowned himself with, and many others i suspect - if not all or most at least perhaps, have in their mind's eye as the sheer live act of pure poetic class barrier one erects, be it bardic or not, sufi or less cerebral.

Heaney tells an interesting tale in his immediate post Nobel period, on a TV show in America; to an efficient male honoring yer man as the undisputed king of Poetry almost, certainly he was riding at the highest point and effectively got the Bay Crown, and in reply to a question asked of him, about when did he start thinking of himself as a poet; he said this event happened as he enrolled his son at primary school in wicklow, when he was knocking forty, and where he had gone to write verse that was having a go at doing its own bog-won thing away from his county omphalos, Derry forst and last, in a republic, as the woodkern thinking of what term to instruct a headmaster filling his sons details in register.

What appellation his own Self used in relation to his person as both thinker and flesh, and mr heaney was thinking along the lines of stating he was a writer or college professor, but the man recording the event put fili (which in English translates as "poet") without asking him what he did for a do; and from that moment on Heaney decided he'd been bestowed an appellation only colleagues have the power to collectively confer on one, and thus is a reason Heaney is the name most non pro's know and agree on as the constant one real thing; poet, because he is the real thing, Sweeney astray inhabiting a myth of his own mind first and last, proving it in the decades spent being himself as a reputation of number one; in at the top and good grew up around him as he worked in verse here and there, when insanity surrounded his peers of the Imagination, he held firm and spoke fair in a body and collection of verse which brought the Dream and unity of being closer to the silence and stay apart one killer barb from mandy motion delivers - not - in a green passport and non-toast to M's chimera of Queen fictional others used in their effort to co-opt him in to the status quo of Great british nomenclature back then, topic of chat in deepest seventies UK lore, as he toiled here feeling the ace none ask to see, as the truth just is, that he is ace itself, his person and Mind in physical event, life written by none but the eldest of nine children two ordinary country people from Derry birthed, who got by on learning as the first of a wave or generation who were afforded the prize of education.

I myself understand this need to be the first with a real chance, where others do not deny one's basic right to belong to an Irish state of mind and not some cod con neo stazi attempt of the non thinking britz who say we cannot be ourselves, You are the mirage alive in Britain, ireland mate..you wha? do as we the State alone instructs one to tell or one will not be included in our mob of headhunting magi looking for the real Irish poets and the gang. So what of it? Yes, certainly there are many excellent poets here who work well when left alone to: "transform into sow, mare, bitch, vixen, she-ass, weasel, serpent, owl, she-wolf, tigress, mermaid, or loathsome hag" as we are told by david the Phoenician expert who is a phonetic mist itself to be fair to another blog pal, misharialadwani, here on the rock of C theories and connections made, thank you very much..