Crossings xxxi

  From cover to cover Seeing Things presents 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, an area of Ulster fen. Heaney’s poem generates increasing momentum: his camera eye moves from measurable distance (quarter of a mile) to nano close-up (millionth of a flicker); his eye-brain coordination shifts from ‘easily recognizable objects’ to unrecognizable objects because too fast to register; the poet himself morphs from the man behind the steering wheel of […]