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Doo-jin LeeThe purpose of this essay is to probe into relationships of community and poetry as they appear in the poems of Emily Dickinson and Seamus Heaney. Both poets underwent social pressures from the societies that surrounded them. Dickinson’s predicament mostly derived from being in a family with a patriarchal father and suffering under a firm Calvinist Church. Heaney also suffered from racial, religious, and political demands of Northern Catholic Ireland. The poetry of Dickinson and Heaney can be regarded as a record of struggle between the poetic mind and a community which frustrated and choked that mind.Confronted with demanding societies, Dickinson and Heaney showed different responses. Dickinson, a woman who lived in the 19th century, had no weapon to wage war against the ruling order which confined her, and she withdrew from the world into her mind to attain poetic freedom. On the other hand, Heaney, affected by national consciousness, had a desire to make a commitment to his people, but finally chose inner exile―mental freedom―to protect universality in his own poetry. These processes, which inevitably provoked conflicts in their minds, helped their poetry to maintain subtlety and intensity, and consequently granted great poetic achievements to both of them.
