How Seamus Heaney Became a Poet of Happiness | The New Yorker

And then - his children grown or in their teens, his job and his reputation secure - Heaney decided to write about happiness. 'Walk on air against your better judgment,' one of the poems from The Spirit Level (2014) suggests. The poet had already moved from earth and water to fire and heat, and then over water again, across the Atlantic. Now he became a poet of air: one who wanted to share with his readers not so much extravagance as confidence, lightness, the ability to stay pleased.