Seeing Things by Seamus Heaney

Fosterling

‘That heavy greenness fostered by water’ The epigraph is taken from John Montague’s The Water Carrier in which the poet as a child fetched water for domestic use from two outdoor sources and recounts the emotions he still feels. Heaney’s Fosterling is here to sing the praises of that same landscape. The poet returns to the lost domain of childhood as a fosterling: before he reached twenty he had left his farming background behind and moved to Queen’s University Belfast as an undergraduate. Taken over by an entirely different lifestyle he would never permanently […]

The Sounds of Rain

in memoriam Richard Ellmann Richard David Ellmann: prominent American literary critic; biographer of the Irish writers James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, and William Butler Yeats. Ellman died in Oxford in 1987. Each panel of the triptych is framed within the sound of rain. Its centre-piece II showcases a fellow Nobel laureate and an academic from Harvard days … the poet reflects on comments they made. The side panels are rain-soaked: in I, as the poet emerges from sleep (then came to), Heaney is visited by mourning voices; in III, […]

Wheels within Wheels

The title’s reference to a ‘complicated system affected by secret or indirect influences’ (OED) is born out in practice. A fun moment provided young Heaney with an entrance into his developing self. Born an intelligent, inquisitive youngster on the family’s rural farm, he enjoyed the thrill of putting his bicycle to experimental use, carefully noting the ‘what-happened’. He discovered the spin, motion around a central axis, force fields, gravity, and deflections dictated by the laws of physics at an early age. I The poet’s first experience of working something out for himself (first reaI grip I ever got on things) involved the art of pedaling – not astride his bicycle, rather with the bike upside down on its seat […]

The Rescue

Nearly two decades have elapsed since Heaney published Somnambulist in Wintering Out. That very short poem was a ‘Wordsworthian’ dream of guilt and repentance closely following Summer Home in which Marie Heaney had been sorely tested by her husband. It demonstrated the poet’s use of a poetic dream to say ‘I am sorry’. The Rescue, similar in brevity and style, exposes the inner recesses of the poet’s consciousness. In a dream sequence that takes place in an arctic wasteland Heaney delivers his beloved from the snow. It demonstrated the poet’s use of a poetic dream to say ‘I love you’. Somewhere in a dream (drifts of sleep) the speaker chances upon his beloved in life-threatening circumstances (Buried to your […]

A Retrospect

Layers of perception: the Heaneys share a loughscape before returning to a familiar mountainside vantage-point. The mature stage they have reached in life is reflected in both pieces particularly the second. I MP (220): Repeatedly in Seeing Things it is the unpredictability and change-ability of water and sky which excite the poet and prompt new and unusual angles of vision. A watercolour in words of an Irish lough-scape dominated by liquidity. To all appearances (apparently) the land is afloat and the man-made gives way to the dominant element: Every road bridging or skirting water. Terra firma is water-locked if not waterlogged (islanded), each landmass a fortress with its own defences (field drains still as moats), guarded […]

A Royal Prospect

Chancing upon photo snaps from twenty five years before, Heaney takes a new look at an excursion he and his wife took to Hampton Court. The piece pointed a long-distance lens at courtship and the early days of marriage (DOD323). Heaney and Marie had married in 1965 and spent their honeymoon in London. Both of them look overwhelmed by sun and circumstances (nearly sunstruck); a ‘he’ with a single thought in mind (wild for her) and a ‘she’, to-the-palace-born, with hair style to match (her neck bared in a page-boy cut); the ‘he’ effecting nonchalance (all dreamy as if a thousand miles away) as they sail on the Thames. ‘He’ notes her alluring pose (Head to one side), her warm […]

A Pillowed Head

Pillowed Head records the unforgettable day on which Heaney’s daughter Catherine Ann was born in April 1973. Marie has entered labour and they are hospital-bound. MatutinaI describes the dawn, its multi-syllabic, staccato suddenness injecting pace into whatever is going on and sharpening senses. The vivid sky throws out maternity clues: iridescent Mother-of-pearl; premature Summer come early; raw and bloody Slashed carmines; watery washed milky blues. The journey is uncongested (first on the road) amidst early-morning chill (ground-mist) and wildlife (pheasants). After a seven year break (older and grateful) Heaney has good reason to feel buoyant: Marie is eager to get on with it (half-grateful/ The pangs had begun) having given birth twice before (clear-headed, foreknowing) and mentally prepared (full […]

Glanmore Revisited 7. The Skylight

Seamus Heaney and his wife did not always see eye to eye in the contested zone of Glanmore Cottage. Heaney recounts one battle (Marie was the one for skylights) that he lost … it happened behind his back! Initial shock is eventually replaced by acceptance of what he cannot reverse. By nature Heaney disliked change: he saw something iconoclastic about taking a saw to Glanmore’s original wood ceiling (cutting into the seasoned tongue-and-groove of pitch pine); his writerly needs preferred something low and closed, a feeling of being enclosed (claustrophobic) in a private nest-up-in-the-roof. No water leaks there (snuff-dry feeling) thanks to the carpentry (perfect, trunk-lid fit); […]

Glanmore Revisited 6. Bedside Reading

Summertime in Glanmore – from his early morning marital bed (we) the poet is refreshed by a new optimism: open windows, brighter light (the whole place airier); a horizontal (eye level) view into the wind-stirred world outside, from distant big summer trees to little shoots of ivy around the window. His power to control ivy (creeping in unless … trained out) extends to memories which time (trained so long now) has taught him to manage such that they crop up without taking over his agenda show their face and keep their distance. He confesses to a troubling period of despondency (white-mouthed depression) figured as a dolphin, (swims out from its shadow) conveyed by its rueful (wet), inscrutable (unreadable), guileless […]

Glanmore Revisited 5. Lustral Sonnet

The poet explains his absence from Glanmore as a classical Roman ‘lustrum’ ritual of spiritual cleansing … Heaney reflects on his return to the cottage. His desire to be a poet turned him into a ‘word-burglar’, an accumulator of intellectual possessions from early on. He experienced the same intruder mentality (breaking and entering) on taking up the ownership of Glanmore. The excitement of pilfering the word-hoard for poetic use (thrilled me) was stronger than any fear it generated (scared me). The same mix of feelings (still did) accompanied his upward-mobility (came into my own) and his slightly uncharactreristic acquisition of bricks and mortar (my own masquerade […]

Glanmore Revisited 4. 1973

1973: the year in which his daughter was born was also Heaney’s first late winter/ early spring experience in Glanmore cottage: the family has lived there for scarcely half a year. The poet’s Curriculum Vitae now reads ‘Occupation: poet’ … he is self-employed with a growing family to feed, without a regular University Lecturer’s salary coming in and with bills to pay. He has no alternative but to get on with the job! March came in like a lion: confined to his work-desk the poet is conscious of winds on creaking roofs (corrugated iron growled like thunder); then Spring in the air (the year turned warmer), when the sick ventured out and shoots appeared (invalids and bulbs came up […]

Glanmore Revisited 3. Scene Shifts

A father shows retrospective remorse for a moment when he lost his temper with his children, aware that he generated a ‘do as I say, not as I do’ situation. The noisy ‘scene’ to which he subjected them is re-worked as a silent melodrama! The initial incident was real enough: Heaney had invited two close friends, Brian Friel and David Hammond (reduced to one for the purposes of the poem) to carve initials into a garden tree (cut his name into the ash); Having watched the grown-ups Heaney’s sons did little more than follow their example (our kids stripped off the bark) and paid the price of unprecedented (first […]

Glanmore Revisited 2. The Cot

The Wicklow cottage past and present – a unifying symbol. From those early days Heaney pictures a neglected garden and some basic implements (scythe and axe and hedge-clippers); he hears echoes of the presence of children (the shriek of the gate the children used to swing on); he recalls the hearth tools (poker, scuttle, tongs) to tend the open fire and a gravel rake to remove clinker from the grate. And now, the cottage still stands there, symbol of an idyllic period (locus amoenus) – the chores are still there to be done (old activity starts up again) but it is no longer quite the same (differently) -their youngsters now lead their own lives (we’re on our own … emptied); poet […]

Glanmore Revisited 1. Scrabble

The cottage at Glanmore (located in County Wicklow in the Irish Republic) into which Heaney moved with his family in 1972 was to play an iconic role in every aspect of his life. Initially rented from Canadian academic and friend, Anne Saddlemyer who later sold it to the Heaneys, the cottage witnessed Heaney’s severance from his Ulster past including his University post, cushioned his risky decision to become a full time poet and testified to a huge amount of his poetic output. It would never lose its emotional impact on the poet but would ultimately prove too small for the family. In 1976 the Heaneys moved to a permanent home in Strand Road, Dublin, retaining Glanmore as a second home […]

The Schoolbag

in memoriam John Hewitt An elegy in sonnet form commemorating an emblem of his Primary School days – a cherished personal possession and a thing of quality: My handsewn leather schoolbag. Heaney builds in a tribute to a cultured Irish friend and a poignant reference to his mother and father. He addresses Hewitt not by name but by respected status (poet) at the age of forty, in mid-career, as Dante put it in the opening line of the Inferno (you were nel mezzo del cammin) . At […]

The Settle Bed

Heaney pictures a massive piece of Irish furniture that came to live and belong in Glanmore Cottage. The inherited gift smacked of Ulster’s past and is used as a metaphor for shared heritage and a better future. The settle bed came as a bequest (willed down), known in advance (waited for), eventually installed (in place at last) and permanent (for good). Its properties reveal its character and style: foldable and hinged (trunk-hasped); weighing a ton (cart-heavy); crudely decorated (painted an ignorant brown); as narrow as church seating (pew-strait); cavernous (bin-deep); all in all, a hallowed object (standing four-square as an ark). To lie in it was to be encoffined (cribbed in seasoned deal), waiting like a Viking hero for cremation […]

The Biretta

The hat worn by a priest in an Irish Victorian painting provides Heaney with poetic charge; he compares the biretta he views in an art gallery with others he has seen or handled as an altar boy in his local church. Heaney presents the biretta‘s shape via the august opening lines of Caesar’s record of the Gallic war (Like Gaul … divided Into three parts). Its sombre confection (black serge) and its pillbox form bring river associations (triple-finned … shipshape). Heaney confesses hewas intimately familiar with every slope and edge of this emblem of the Catholic church itself, neatly presented (trimly articulated) and resolute (decided). Its plush crimped satin interior and serious weight (heavy too) seemed at odds with its embellishment […]

A Basket of Chestnuts

Heaney reflects on the ‘meaning’ of the portrait of himself exhibited in the National Gallery of Ireland, focusing on a local-colour prop that does not actually appear in the finished panel. Involuntary memory (shadow boost) has brought chesnuts into his mind: the random act of handling a loaded basket has conjured up a hazy, ill-defined occurence (giddy strange assistance) swinging it revealed an interplay between gravity and weightlessness. He considers the dynamic variation of mass and momentum (lightness … diminish … actual weight), picks out the split second at the apex of the lift when hands feel no pull (unburdened), as if left behind (outstripped), surprised (dismayed), redundant (passed through). Then, just as unexpectedly, comes bounce-back (rebound), gravitational downthrust, and counter […]

The Pitchfork

Heaney revealed to DOD (336): I loved handling the fork and the rake, their lightness and rightness in the hand, their perfect suitedness to the jobs they had to do. It meant that the work of turning a swathe, for example, was its own reward; angling the shaft and the tines so that the hay turned over like a woven fabric – that was an intrinsically artistic challenge. Tasty work, as they say. Using the pitchfork was like playing an instrument. So much so that when you clipped and trimmed the head of a ruck, the strike of the fork on the hay made it a kind of tuning fork. The poem is a tribute both to the king of […]

Field of Vision

Heaney’s Aunt Mary whom he adored as a youngster is the central focus of Sunlight, a lyrical vignette from his early life in Mossbawn that introduces the North collection of 1975. Field of vision recalls the increasingly limited outlook the old aunt was reduced to in her last years. Heaney admired her fortitude and in this poem spends some time ‘seeing things’ through her eyes. Ultimately the stage Mary has reached contributes to young man’s feeling that it will soon be time to leave the family home. Prior to her hospitalization in the mid-70s Mary coped with a long period of immobility in the family home (sat for years In a wheelchair). Silence prevails in her living quarters. Mary’s gaze does […]

An August Night

Heaney’s titles often open more than a single line of suggestion; in this piece a possible play on the word ‘august’ linking a month that offers outdoor nocturnal nature-spotting opportunities with the hands of a venerable father. Heaney focuses on his father Patrick Heaney’s hands that he saw in a dream (again last night). The hands were those of the man: his warm heart, diminutive stature (small) and broad experience (knowledgeable). The interlacing of his fingers conjured up the contortions of a pair of fierce predators (two ferrets) at play; their aloofness (by themselves) is a further clue to his father’s nature. Hands in a dream but in the beloved august landscape (moonlit field) where such sightings were possible. Heaney is a […]

1.1.87

Heaney alluded to his father’s recurrent presence in Seeing Things in conversation with DOD: My father’s death in October 1986 was the final ‘unroofing’ of the world and I’m certain it affected me in ways that were hidden from me then and now. (p322). This brief poem, dated fewer than three months after Patrick Heaney’s death sees the poet facing a New Year still fresh with the pain of bereavement. Bleak midwinter offers no warmth to cheer Heaney’s way ahead (Dangerous pavements). His capacity to cope with the physical and emotional challenges (I face the ice this year) is bolstered by a symbol seen already in The Ash Plant, the iconic support that kept his father’s feet firmly on the […]

The Ash Plant

Seeing Things, the collection’s title poem, featured Heaney’s father Patrick in a make-believe dramatization that brought them ‘face to face’. Heaney revealed how his view of his father changed with age: With the passing of time, awe of the living father has given way to an affectionate acceptance of a fellow […]

Seeing Things

The title poem, a triptych, explores variations on the theme of ‘visibility’: a primary experience that taught of life’s impermanence; stone chiseled to produce liquid images; a telling face-to-face with a father, dead yet still alive. Annihilation, whereby ultimately everything is reduced to nothingness, lurks ineluctably in the background. I A poem about ‘utterness’: the visibility of primary experience raised to high-definition status. Once upon a time the infant Heaney was treated to a Sunday morning outing en famille to Inishbofin island. The scene provided a feast for his young senses: glare (Sunlight), sight and smell (turf smoke), sound (seagulls), perspective (boatslip), an invasive odour (diesel). The individual youngsters present were handled carefully (One by one […]

Three Drawings

Three scenes present themselves from memory: the first associated with gaelic football games such as were played at his school (St Columb’s College in Derry), the second from of a pleasure day spent on the riverbank and the third from Norse mythology. On the poet’s journey of re-envisioning, each will fuel the revelatory process going on in Heaney’s mind. The Point An image of schooldays is suddenly posted on Heaney’s mind-screen (Those were the days – booting a leather football) drawing the acknowledgement that schooling was there to push Heaney as an individual truer and farther than you ever expected! The two principal skills of the game were kicking and catching. The football he kicked crossed uncultured, unfertile surfaces […]