How does the real get into the made-up? asks Seamus Heaney in Known World, possibly my favourite poem from Electric Light. The line jumped out at me on the way home from work (listening to it read on tape), bashing me over the head with its calculated simplicity. The poem itself is based largely around the drunken escapades of Heaney and fellow writers at a poetry festival somewhere near Greece. I assume it to be about a 'real' experience, but the possibility of some deft fictionalising on the part of Heaney cannot be discounted, if only because his own question makes you aware of that possibility.
My answer to the question is: by a kind of magic - which successfully, deliberately avoids any real answer. Frankly, I like the question and prefer it unanswered. I suspect Heaney feels something similar, for the next line in the poem ruefully runs, Ask me an easier one.
A wise unknowing is at work here.
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