Ars Originem: On Poems of Literary Origin

Part II of III: Seamus Heaney's "Digging"

It’s no wonder that poets might choose to make sense of their beginnings as writers through writing, ordering themselves within a tradition and offering a story of the self that accounts for this heightened attention. The ars originem addresses the artist’s formation before the artistry, defining the limits of that vastness from which the impulse emerge…