Seamus Heaney appreciation by Seamus Heaney

A Dog Was Crying Tonight in Wicklow Also

in memory of Donatus Nwoga Heaney pens an elegiac tribute to Nigerian scholar and critic Donatus Nwoga who was a fellow student at Queen’s University, Belfast, in the 1950s. He reworks an Igbo fable from the Nigerian folk lore of Donatus’s roots in which Humanity fails in its attempt to make earthly death anything other than an irreversible state. When men realized they were mortal (found out about death) they appealed to the highest Igbo authority via Man’s so-called best friend (sent the dog to Chukwu with a message). They urged the supreme deity to make death temporary and reversible (they wanted to be let back to the house of life). They were unhappy with the idea that their souls […]

M

The monogram represents iconic Russian poet and essayist Osip Mandelstam much admired by Heaney for resisting the repressive Eastern European political machines that sought to silence him. The poet allegorizes his conviction that men of Mandelstam’s stature will ensure that truth will always come out. Heaney’s publisher of messages, a magician/contradiction in terms (deaf phonetician), has developed a method of bringing his patient’s interior monologue to light despite the vocal silence imposed by outside forces. He smuggles out what cannot be heard using touch (his hand over the dome of a speaker’s skull) – his skill at unraveling speech formats (diphthong … vowel by the bone vibrating to the sound) has made the unfeasible feasible and defeated censorship. Heaney’s speaker […]

An Architect

Evidence suggests that the unnamed Architect is Robin Walker who died in 1991. Heaney’s poem becomes an elegiac tribute to one of Ireland’s most eminent 20th century architects. He paints the portrait of a man in his professional and personal spaces. Observation of the architect’s demeanour and environment confirms an artistic kinship sensed by Heaney even acquaintance without implying close friendship. The architect’s success in life is predicated on his personal traits: healthy mind in healthy body (he fasted); special talent (gift); self-motivation (exacting more); a sense of self-preservation (minding) when for example indulging his taste for Japanese design (boulder and … raked zen gravel). A man equally full on (no slouch either) when consuming the ‘hard stuff’ (whenever it […]

The Sharping Stone

Five poems are triggered by the discovery of a gift in mint condition lying forgotten in a drawer. The fourth piece identifies Heaney’s late father-in-law Thomas ‘Tommy’ Devlin and clues suggest that he is the centrepiece. Heaney zooms slowly in on the whetstone: from the furniture in which it was discovered (an apothecary’s chest of drawers), a quality piece (sweet cedar) of modest provenance (purchased second hand) to its specific location in a drawer (one of its weighty deep-sliding recesses). Therein the object itself (sharping stone) and recall of its original intended recipient who for the moment will remain anonymous (our gift to him). In mint condition (still in its wrapping paper). Too late to deliver now (Tommy has passed […]

The Strand

A poem of love and loss – Heaney’s ageing father once left signature markings on a Dublin beach; inevitably washed away by the next incoming tide they will never be obliterated from the poet’s memory. As they took the air together once on Sandymount Strand the point of Patrick Heaney’s stick left a trail (the dotted line my father’s ashplant made). As long as Heaney lives nothing the all-powerful sea can do will succeed in effacing that visual memory: something else the tide won’t wash away. dotted line: literally the line of marks imprinted by the stick on soft sand; metaphorically the space left on a form or letter upon which a person leaves his signature; Strand: a Dublin beach […]

The Walk

Twin sonnets of love – the first for parental devotion and guidance – the second, a ‘longshot’ contemplating his marriage to Marie that has lasted more than three decades. The first ‘photo’ is ‘fixed’ (his parents are no longer of this world), the second a black and white negative from which positive prints are plentiful and on-going. Fifty years on Heaney’s childhood Mossbawn walks with his mother and father still shed a magical light (glamoured) on time and place (the road, the day) and them (him and her), wherever they might take him (everywhere). The elements mixed and merged – solid mineral and liquid (cobbles were riverbed), what they breathed associated with spiritual day (Sunday air) beneath the dome of […]

At the Wellhead

Two moving sonnets take Heaney back to his Castledawson roots and celebrate the blind musician Rosie Keenan who brought a new creative art into his life. The poet addresses the veteran singer (school-friend of his mother and his Aunt Mary). His emotions run deep. He recalls the tunes (your songs, when you sing them) delivered in her singular way (your two eyes closed as you always do); airs as familiar to him and his playmates as ‘the back of their hands’ (local road we’ve known every turn of in the past); lyrical melodies that betoken the mid-Ulster cul-de-sac where she dwelt (midge-veiled, high-hedged side-road) along the Broagh Road out of Castledawson. That is where they might find her, sightlessly attentive […]

At Banagher

An unexpected alter-ego of a kind – Heaney recognises an alternative embodiment of his own vocation. From his travels around Co. Derry he picks out an itinerant tradesman emblematic of old Ireland and detects similarities between himself and this wandering seamster. Just as the tailor has a way with clothes so the poet has a way with words – they both spend their time making up, unpicking, altering and putting back together. Without any warning (then all of a sudden) poetic charge can enter the poetic consciousness (appears to me) – on this occasion a remnant of old Ireland, a sharer of Heaney’s ancestry who mirrors in figurative form many of the poet’s traits (journeyman tailor who was my antecedent). […]

Tollund

Heaney penned this poem in September 1994 immediately following the IRA cease-fire of August 1994 that gave rise to cautious hope for Northern Ireland. Tollund Man first appeared in Wintering Out, Heaney’s third collection of 1972 and will feature again in District and Circle of 2006. Heaney explained how he and Marie ended up on Tollund Moss (DOD (p350): I was asked to write about the IRA announcement of ceasefire for the next weekend’s Sunday Tribune. That same weekend I was also bound for Denmark to do a reading in Copenhagen University, and inevitably I was remembering the visit I’d made to Jutland twenty-one years earlier to see the Tollund Man. What happened, at any rate, was an unexpected trip […]

Postscript

Memory, distance and emotion translate into a moment of simple joyous exaltation and deep love for being alive and Irish. The poem echoes all things Heaney and is for many their favourite music. The poet begs all who would listen and consent to share (some time make the time) to follow in his leisurely footsteps (drive out west) and be prepared for an unexpected moment of heart stopping beauty in the remoteness of the Burren (County Clare) where the land meets the sea in a series of rocky limestone plates (along the Flaggy Shore). Autumn (September or October) provides optimum elemental collaboration (the wind and the light … working off each other) – to the right untamed open sea (ocean […]

Afterthoughts

Contents Heaney an extraordinary man in ordinary clothing Heaney the cordon-bleu cook Heaney the agent of change Heaney the orchestral composer Heaney the word painter Heaney the meticulous craftsman (including phonetic information) Subjects and Circumstances of individual poems Formats and Rhymes of individual poems Stylistic devices Heaney an extraordinary man in ordinary clothes Poets are a breed apart! Unlike ordinary mortals such as you and I their consciousness is constantly tuned into things that give off a poetic charge and their vocation compels them to pounce on such sudden, involuntary moments before they fade away. Poets are constantly on the qui-vive; they have a way of recording these unpredictable, involuntary instances – poets are never far away from composition mode […]

Navigating the ‘Station Island’ Collection

Contents Foreword followed by: Main Sources; the Structure of Station Island; biographical ‘events’ between 1976-1984; the collection and its moment; Heaney’s ‘book of changes’; ‘hampering stuff’; Catholic beginnings; loss of faith; breaking loose; the political dimension; ‘Troubles’ timeline; poetry and politics: retaining a neutral voice; reconciling the clash between politics and poetry; the redemptive power of Art; Irishness; the Poems individual commentaries with footnotes and reflections on style and structure Part 1: the stirrings of change; The Underground La Toilette Sloe Gin Away from it All Chekhov on Sakhalin Sandstone Keepsake Shelf Life A Migration Last Look Remembering Malibu Making Strange The Birthplace Changes An Ulster Twilight A Bat on the Road A Hazel Stick for Catherine Ann A […]

Foreword

Station Island, published by Faber and Faber in 1984, is Seamus Heaney’s seventh collection. Heaney is in his mid-forties. The totality of his collections over more than half a century since Death of a Naturalist (1966) have confirmed his place at the very top of the premier league of poets writing in English. The textual commentaries that follow seek to tease out what Heaney’s poems are intimating in Station Island. Of course, the poet’s ‘message’ will have started life as an essentially personal one not intended primarily for his reader; there are moments when some serious unravelling is required. Thanks to the depth of Heaney’s knowledge, scholarship and the sincerity of his personal feelings, his poetry is rich in […]

Afterthoughts

Finding the blend. The most successful poets share much in common with the best chefs; the latters’ knowledge of the finest products supplemented by a talent that adds the individual flavours of spices, herbs and myriad ingredients in just the right amounts at just the right moment produces the unique, mouth-watering experiences capable of delighting and inspiring those who savour the result. The ‘knowledge’ is gleaned from experience and requires hard work; the ‘talent’ is a gift granted only to the very few. In these respects Heaney is a craftsman pursuing a similar goal. In Station Island he is the ‘master-chef’. A number of poems in the collection offer insights into the poetic process as Heaney experiences it. Whatever the initial […]

Navigating the ‘North’ Collection

Foreword Introduction Biographical ‘events’ between 1968-1975 Themes and issues Enrichment Dedications Lexical focus Comments contemporary to Publication Comments from main source authors (as below) Heaney’s further insights The structure of North The North Poems individual commentaries with footnotes and reflections on style and structure Part I Act Of Union Aisling Antaeus Belderg Bog Queen Bone Dreams Come to the Bower Funeral Rites Hercules and Antaeus Kinship North Ocean’s Love to Ireland Punishment Strange Fruit The Betrothal of Cavehill The Digging Skeleton The Grauballe Man Viking Dublin: Trial Pieces Part II Freedman Singing School 1 The Ministry of Fear 2 A Constable Calls 3 Orange Drums 4 Summer 1969 5 Fosterage 6 Exposure The Unacknowledged Legislator’s Dream Whatever You Say Say […]

Foreword

North published by Faber and Faber in 1975 is Seamus Heaney’s fourth collection. Heaney was in his mid-thirties. The totality of his collections over more than half a century confirmed Heaney’s place at the top of the premier league of poets writing in English. He died suddenly in August 2013. The textual commentaries that follow seek to tease out what Heaney’s poems are intimating in North. Of course, the poet’s ‘message’ will have started life as an essentially personal one not intended primarily for his reader; there are moments when some serious unravelling is required. Thanks to the depth of Heaney’s knowledge, scholarship and personal feelings, his poetry is rich in content – digging into background-materials is both essential and […]

Sunlight

The poem is a memorial to its central figure, a warm, nostalgic rural study from the poet’s past dedicated to his Aunt Mary. The first line introduces the motif and emotions of what follows: There was a sunlit absence. The phrase encapsulates: nostalgic feelings from childhood; the warmth of sunlight; warm relationships; irreversible time past; a scene and a person missed. We will follow the poet’s eye as it moves from farmyard into kitchen. The initial scene is narrated in the past. In the yard stood the helmeted pump as if on sentry-duty (Heaney often lends a military bearing to the cast-iron agricultural paraphernalia of his childhood); the poet evokes the subtle colour of water drawn from the peaty water-table […]

The Seed Cutters

A second ‘word-canvas’ depicts an age-old routine practised in Heaney’s Ulster farming community. He is perhaps inspired by a memory or a photo, even literally a calendar picture depicting rural practice. Such groups of farm workers would be recognisable back in Breughel’s time: They seem hundreds of years away. Heaney addresses the Flemish artist who painted rural scenes in 16c. Flanders; the artist would approve Heaney’s likeness, providing he, the poet, can find the words to do the scene justice: if I can get them true. This uncomfortable activity is taking place at ground level: the labourers kneel and are exposed to the elements behind an ineffective wind-break. Scene-setting precedes identification: only in line 5 do we learn that They […]

Antaeus

The mythical content of the North collection opens with a North African child-of-the- earth living in an ‘Irish’ habitat. Allegory is in the making: the confrontation between Antaeus and Hercules is announced; they will meet in combat in the final poem of Part I. As the end of the story is already known we are reconciled to the inevitable defeat of Antaeus and whatever he stands for. Heaney himself spelt out both the allegory and its irony: ‘elevation’ is impossible for Antaeus and, by extension, for Ireland’. A ‘giant’ figure from Greek/ North African mythology was invincible in combat as long as he retained contact with the earth that renewed his strength whenever he fell. Antaeus describes what makes his […]

Belderg

A 3000 year old site in County Mayo, Ireland acts as a catalyst for exploring in congenial dialogue the linkage between artefacts, peoples, myths, cultures and ancient languages. The piece centres the doggedness, roots and recurrence critical to the development of Irish nationhood around an ancient artefact. Heaney is said to have pinned the poem to the door of Patrick Caulfield’s house (see below) as a thank you note after they exchanged views in 1974 (DODp163). The speaker tells of a ‘local’ with whom he discussed objects that regularly came to light (just kept turning up) but were dismissed by the uneducated as beyond their comprehension (foreign). Each stone’s central hole made it one-eyed though, unlike the classical Cyclops, harmlessly […]

Funeral Rites

In a 1962 commentary Heaney referred to Funeral Rites as a dream of forgiveness, the dream of the possibility of forgiveness; His three panneled sequence pursues angles associated with death and burial moving from family wakes via the uncontrolled violence of the Troubles into myth and legend. Ultimately the sequence yearns for a solution to the unbreakable cycle of murder and revenge and suggests that a Norse hero might hold the key. In a sense Heaney ‘s vision is prophetic: history will demonstrate almost twenty years later that the road to peace and reconciliation will by definition require that some acts remain unavenged and that irreconcilable factions talk together. I Heaney reflects on his presence at traditional Irish Catholic family […]

North

Incertus, the pen name Heaney gave himself in the early Belfast days of poetry writing never really goes away. The poet has come to seek release from a build-up of inner tensions, be they generated by the depressing state of Northern Ireland or his nagging uncertainty about the way his poetry is presenting. To help him cope with troubling issues Heaney has felt the need for solitude in which to receive the benefit and reassurance of a counselling voice. The speaker is standing on a sandy beach (strand) along the rugged Donegal coast (shod of a bay). The sheer power of what he is hearing brings to mind the god Thor who in Viking mythology hammered to create land, sea […]

Viking Dublin: Trial Pieces

Heaney feeds on poetic charges triggered by a cultural event: ‘Then there was the Viking Dublin exhibit in the National Museum, based on the dig being done by Brendán Ó Ríordáin at the Wood Quay site’ (DOD p.163). An exhibit Heaney sees arouses his curiosity and sparks off subsequent associations. Heaney gives his imagination free rein in pursuit of Viking links with Dublin and by extension with Irish language and culture. I A museum exhibit invites questions as to its provenance … something human maybe (jaw-bone or a rib) or part of something more substantial (sturdier). Poised to move on (anyhow) the observer’s interest is captured by an original marking (a small outline) scratched into the bone (incised) a squared, […]

The Digging Skeleton

Scholars and students have long set themselves the challenge of translation. Heaney show-cases his skills in this version after Baudelaire. He is loyal to Baudelaire’s picture of human misery and his rejection of belief in a better life after death. In questioning the poetic charge generated in Heaney’s mind by a French poem from 1875 it is perhaps enough to suggest that he was only too conscious of the Irish labouring to dig up potatoes that would poison up to a million of them during the Great Irish Famine only a decade before Baudelaire’s poem was published. The poverty and starvation of a whole race is not curtailed, both poets suggest, by death. I The speaker is strolling along the […]

Bone Dreams

Heaney shed light on the genesis of his six ‘dream’ poems in conversation with DOD (p 157): ‘That summer of 1972, the month before we moved (to Glanmore Cottage in County Wicklow)…we did a lot of driving in the south-west of England, saw the white horses carved into the hills, visited Maiden Castle in Dorset and the old earthworks in Dorchester. When we were in Gloucestershire staying in this lovely Tudor manor house where Marie’s sister was then living, I wrote Bone Dreams – the first of those loose-link ziggy-zaggy sequences that would eventually appear in North. At the time artist friend Barrie Cooke was doing a series of ‘bone boxes’; thinking about them brought up memories of bones I […]