The subject that Seamus Heaney has treated in

“The Redress of Poetry”, is not a new. The

purpose of poetry has always been a topic of
practical importance to every one.
The question is that whether poetry is a pragmatic
activiity in society or it is just aesthetic.
There have been a lot of discussions whether
poets are helpful in the miseries of life or they are
just worthless people.
Plato, for example, hated poets and he had
banished the poets from his ‘Republic’. But
Aristotle believed that the poets are essential to
keep balance in society and they took us towards
the ideal.
Besides Aristole, there were others who defended
poetry against objections. For instance, Sydney
asserted that
‘The poet takes us to the ideal’. 
Oscar wild said that life should imitate art because
art presents the perfect. Arnold went to the extent
of saying that all that now goes in the name of
religion or philosophy will be replaced by poetry
and Sidney wrote in “Apology for Poetry”:
“Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the
World”.
To justify poetry through its fuctions, heaney first
first enumerates that OED has four entries for
‘redress’ as a noun, and I began by calling upon
the first sense which it provides: ‘ Reparation of,
satisfaction or compensation for, a wrong
sustained or the loss resulting from this.’ For
‘redress’ as a verb the dictionary gives fifteen
separate entries, all of them subdivided two or
three times, and almost all of the usages noted as
obsolete.

I have also taken account of the first of these

obsolete meanings, which is given as,
‘To set (a person or a thing) upright again; to raise
again to an erect position. Also fig. to set up
again, restore, re-establish.’
Heaney redresses a wrong done to poets and
poetry in the contempoarry word.
Heaney makes a fresh attempt to defend poetry in
this age of science and technology. Today, poetry
and philosophy are now considered idle mental
luxuries while commerce, computer and business
administration have been foregrounded. Again,
justificaton of poetry becomes madatory.
Heaney starts his thesis by distinguishing two
planes of existence. For him, the world of reality
and the world of imagination are two different
worlds but they depend upon each other and they
reinforce each other and this is the subject of his
poem “Squarings”. From this story, Heaney
concludes that there are two worlds, our everyday
world and the world of visionary crew.
Heaney believes in the poetic sixth sense which
provides a passage into the domain of the
imagination. Here Heaney also quotes Donne’s
religious experience when he says,
“God throws down in order to rise up”. 
It’s a religious paradox that sin brings man closer
to God. This is how Heaney concludes that these
paradoxes are captured only by poetry. Heaney
keeps moving between the world of fact and the
world of imagination. He quotes from Pinskey to
support his argument. Pinskey says:
“The poet has a responsibility to answer. He is to
answer the question raised by life. Life raises
questions and poet gives answers”
Seamus Heaney defends poetry on the ground of
utility also. He says poetry focuses from delight to
wisdom. He says the world of poetry is an answer
to the world of fact.
Life creates anxieties; Poetry tries to relieve them.
Life disturbs but poetry consoles. It shows man
the right path and poetry has a power of
sustaining man in difficulties. These are the
pragmatic advantages of poetry. Heaney also
defends poetry on the level of its aesthetic utility.
We get pleasure out of words. Man comes to
wisdom through delight, not to delight through
wisdom. Man studies poetry to amuse himself and
to satisfy his soul but in this psychological state he
gets wisdom as well.
Thus, poetry is a pleasurable study of life. Poetry
can very pleasantly and easily explore the
subjects which are generally denied by social,
racial, sexual, and political prejudices and all this
is done through the linguistic medium. But the
poet has to take care that while discussing these
issues poetry should not be sacrificed, Heaney
says that the poets should not narrow down their
scope by limiting poetry to certain dimensions of
time and space. It should be free from any
restriction. Some demand that the poets should
write against the common trend to shock the
minds of the people.

They should write revolutionary poetry. But the

impact of poetry is not practical, it is
psychological. Poetry does not force man to go
and fight. But poetry shows what is wrong and
what is right.
If poetry becomes practical, according to Heaney,
it will not remain poetry, it will become a
propaganda.

The heckler, therefore, is going to have little

sympathy with Wallace Stevens when he declares
the poet to be a potent figure because the poet
‘creates the world to which we turn incessantly
and without knowing it, and ... gives life to the
supreme fictions without which we are unable to
conceive of [that world]’ - meaning that if our given
experience is a labyrinth, its impassability can still
be countered by the poet’s imagining some
equivalent of the labyrinth and presenting himself
and us with a vivid experience of it. 

Such an operation does not intervene in the actual

but by offering consciousness a chance to
recognize its predicaments, foreknow its
capacities and rehearse its comebacks in all kinds
of venturesome ways it does constitute a
beneficent event, for poet and audience alike. It
offers a response to reality which has a liberating
and verifying effect upon the individual spirit, and
yet I can see how such a function would be
deemed insufficient by a political activist.

For the activist, there is going to be no point in

envisaging an order which is comprehensive of
events but not in itself productive of new events.
Engaged parties are not going to be grateful for a
mere image - no matter how inventive or original -
of the field of force of which they are a part.
They will always want the redress of poetry to be
an exercise of leverage on behalf of their point of
view; they will require the entire weight of the thing
to come down on their side of the scales.
It is not the nature of poetry.

Heaney quotes Wallace Stevens in order to

evaluate his argument. Wallace says:
“Poetry creates an alternative world to the world of
fact. Poetry suggests what life ought to be. It
shows possibilities; it shows what is desirable”
Moreover, Poetry is about man. Poetry promotes,
love of men. Poetry shows that all men are
human beings and they deserve sympathy. But
politics tells us that some people deserve
sympathy and some deserve our wrath.
Poetry speaks of love for all people: Politics
forces people to kill other people. In fact, politics
divides men. If poetry becomes politics, it will not
remain poetry, it will become a propaganda and in
this way it will divide humanity into friends and
foes as in the case of the Irish men who were
killed in the rising of 1916 . But he is also sorry for
the Englishmen who died in the fight. Talking
about the humanitarian zeal of poetry.
Heaney says, that zeal considers both enemies
and friends as men. He does not discriminate
between the Irish People and the English people.
Both were fighting for their ideals. That is exactly
what poetry conveys to us, everyman whether
black or white; Irish or English has the same
feeling, passions and blood.
Heaney raises an interesting point here which is
also shared by Edward Said in “Culture and
Imperialism” that the sensibility of the people of
the colonies is coloured by the sensibility of the
imperial masters.
As the Irish condemn the English but they use
the English medium. Imperialism has inculcated in
their minds a culture that they tried to reject. But
this is also a very healthy experience. The Irish
hate the English, still they love Shakespeare and
Keats.
To conclude, Heaney tries to demonstrate that
poetry has a function in life, though not
ostentatious. The poet does nothing on purpose,
but poetry is a medium which by its very nature
serves a purpose as Wordsworth says that his
poetry has a purpose.
It is not meaningless activity. But this purpose is
not imposed upon poetry. Heaney believes that
poetry cannot be subjected to any particular
direction and nor limited to any certain aspect of
society.
He emphasises that poets should elevate their
services on universal level and poetry should be
above all racial, social and political prejudices.
This is how he justifies poetry and enumerates its
fuctions in his essay, ‘Redress of Poetry”.