Crossings xxx

  From cover to cover Seeing Things features a series of interfaces: journeys in and out of real world situations; between real and mythical; between secular and spiritual; between existence and annihilation; between objective and subjective; from the present into the future; between first order experience and seeing things through new eyes. Such crossings involve a range of access points: doors, windows, gates, casements, a circle of plaited straw. Of tradition in Ireland St Brigid’s Day witnessed the piety and superstition of rural communities. This hybrid Christian/ Celtic feast of renewals (the new life could be entered) provides a poetic charge as Heaney reviews ‘old certainties’ (MP221, below). The girdle is a crossing point (going through); from upbringing he recall […]