Bookplanet: Heaney as poetry critic

'Heaney is one of the few contemporary poets who frequently insists that our initial response to a poem should be pleasure, delight, and surprise. In more classic terms, he prefers poetry that delights and instructs. He admires the balance, for example, evident in the poetry of Milosz, “where the needle is constantly atremble between the reality principle and the pleasure principle: Prospero and Ariel adding to either side of the argument." The essays in the collection are held together, says Heaney, by searches for answers to central preoccupying questions: “How should a poet properly live and write? What is his relationship to his own voice, his own place, his literary heritage and his contemporary world?” In the broadest sense, then, Finders Keepers represents the autobiography of the poet.' More here.