Make impulse one with willfulness. During this 1990 reading, part of an Irish Literature Festival, poet Seamus Heaney claims this line, from “The Latch,” as his own poetic self-instruction—and one of the benefits of “getting a little bit older.”
Heaney reads from a selection of his work, including “From Station Island,” “Nesting Ground” and parts of “Squarings” and “Clearances,” a sequence which meditates on the passing of his mother.