I wonder whether many of those who rate him highly actually read and appreciate his work, or whether they just like the idea of Seamus Heaney.
I've certainly met some people over the years who loudly proclaimed their fondness for a particular work of art, literature or music, not because they actually liked it, but because they wanted to be seen as educated and refined people. But I don't usually find superficial people like that very interesting to talk to, so I tend to avoid them. Of my friends who say they like Seamus Heaney's poetry, I'm entirely confident that all of them genuinely do admire and appreciate it, because none of them are the sort of people who would pretend to if they didn't.
So, on that basis I'm inclined to give Heaney another go. It's entirely possible that I still won't like his poetry, but that's ok because everyone responds to art in a different way and not everyone can or should like everything.
I've got friends who really like Mahler or Shostakovich, and while I can certainly appreciate those composers' merit on a technical level, their music doesn't really do anything for me on a personal, subjective level, certainly not when compared to, say, Bach's Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F51uHpH3yQk), Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0U6sWqfrnTs) or Steve Reich's Six Marimbas (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaYvMwQd3cs). Equally, there are people who find much of Bach's work clinical exercises in abstraction, can't be doing with Vaughan Williams, and just don't see the point in Reich or Glass' repetitive minimalism, but find that, say, late-1990s drum and bass contains a wealth of colour and innovation that speaks to them in a way that other forms of music don't.
This isn't to say there's no such thing as bad poetry, art, literature or music - on the contrary there's a distressing amount of it out there. But enough people rate Heaney's work highly that surely they can't all be making it up in order to look clever, so there's probably something in it, even if that something doesn't appeal to you (which it apparently doesn't) or me (which it didn't use to, and might still not).
What I didn't really get for years is that appreciation of art isn't a well-defined question with a single valid answer. You are entirely at liberty to conclude that Seamus Heaney's work is rubbish, and others are within their rights to think it's brilliant - and you'd all be right.
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I've certainly met some people over the years who loudly proclaimed their fondness for a particular work of art, literature or music, not because they actually liked it, but because they wanted to be seen as educated and refined people. But I don't usually find superficial people like that very interesting to talk to, so I tend to avoid them. Of my friends who say they like Seamus Heaney's poetry, I'm entirely confident that all of them genuinely do admire and appreciate it, because none of them are the sort of people who would pretend to if they didn't.
So, on that basis I'm inclined to give Heaney another go. It's entirely possible that I still won't like his poetry, but that's ok because everyone responds to art in a different way and not everyone can or should like everything.
I've got friends who really like Mahler or Shostakovich, and while I can certainly appreciate those composers' merit on a technical level, their music doesn't really do anything for me on a personal, subjective level, certainly not when compared to, say, Bach's Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F51uHpH3yQk), Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0U6sWqfrnTs) or Steve Reich's Six Marimbas (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaYvMwQd3cs). Equally, there are people who find much of Bach's work clinical exercises in abstraction, can't be doing with Vaughan Williams, and just don't see the point in Reich or Glass' repetitive minimalism, but find that, say, late-1990s drum and bass contains a wealth of colour and innovation that speaks to them in a way that other forms of music don't.
This isn't to say there's no such thing as bad poetry, art, literature or music - on the contrary there's a distressing amount of it out there. But enough people rate Heaney's work highly that surely they can't all be making it up in order to look clever, so there's probably something in it, even if that something doesn't appeal to you (which it apparently doesn't) or me (which it didn't use to, and might still not).
What I didn't really get for years is that appreciation of art isn't a well-defined question with a single valid answer. You are entirely at liberty to conclude that Seamus Heaney's work is rubbish, and others are within their rights to think it's brilliant - and you'd all be right.