Seamus Heaney

1
Seamus Heaney

• Michael and Rebecca

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Biography

• Born April 13 1939
• Lived on family farm in County Derry
• Attended St. Josephs College
• Married Marie Devlin and had three children
  Michael Christopher and Kathryn Ann
  
• Published Eleven Poems in 1965 with the Belfast
  Festival
  
• Became renown after publishing Death of A
  Naturalist
  
• Honored with the Poetry Book Society Choice of
  the year award for Door into the Dark
  
• Joined Field Day a theatre company founded by
  Brian Friel and Stephen Real
  
• Adapted a version of Sophocles Philoctetes
• In 1984 he was named Boylston Professor of
  Rhetoric and Oratory one of Harvards most
  prestigious offices
  
• Won Nobel Peace Prize in Literature in 1995

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Heaneys Work as a Whole

• His parents diverse background included the
  traditional Gaelic farm life and the up and
  coming Industrial Revolution which led to an
  inner quarrel.
• This inner quarrel became a conflict between his
  childhood innocence versus his place as an adult
  in society.
  
• His passion towards his native country of Ireland
  serves as a reference point for many of his
  poems.
  
• Heaney explores what it is to be a human being
  during times of joy and times of struggle.
  
• Heaney uses literary allusion throughout his
  poems often alluding to Greek gods and figures
  
• Many of Heaneys poems serve as his way to
  discover his place as a writer in a world where
  physical action is the traditionally accepted
  symbol of strength.

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Personal Helicon

• for Michael Longley
• As a child they could not keep me from wells
• And old pumps with buckets and windlasses.
• I loved the dark drop the trapped sky the
  smells
  
• Of waterweed fungus and dank moss.  
• One in a brickyard with a rotted board top.
• I savored the rich crash when a bucket
• Plummeted down at the end of a rope.
• So deep you saw no reflection in it.  
• A shallow one under a dry stone ditch
• Fructified like any aquarium.
• When you dragged out long roots from the soft
  mulch
  
• A white face hovered over the bottom.  
• Others had echoes gave back your own call
• With a clean new music in it. And one

I rhyme to see myself
To set the darkness echoing.
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Analysis of Personal Helicon

• In Greek mythology Mount Helicon was sacred to
  Apollo and the Muses.
  
• Heaney alludes to Narcissus a Greek figure
  obsessed with his reflection. This parallels
  Heaneys captivation with his lost childhood.
  
• Heaneys optimistic language can be juxtaposed
  with the connotations associated with his dark
  topic. His passionate way of describing the dank
  and dark is ironic.

• Heaney explores the conflict between the freedom
  of youth and societys expectations of adults. He
  uses his poetry as compensation for lost
  childhood experiences.
• Personal Helicon is a means for Heaney to
  communicate his internal emotions and illuminate
  the negative aspects of life.

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Twice Shy

•  

Her scarf a la Bardot In suede flats for the
walk She came with me one eveningFor air and
friendly talk.We crossed the quiet river Took
the embankment walk.Traffic holding its breath
Sky a tense diaphragm Dusk hung like a
backclothThat shook where a swan swam
Tremulous as a hawkHanging deadly calm.A
vacuum of needCollapsed each hunting heartBut
tremulously we heldAs hawk and prey apart
Preserved classic decorum Deployed our talk
with art.

• Our JuveniliaHad taught us both to wait Not
  to publish feelingAnd regret it all too late
  -Mushroom loves alreadyHad puffed and burst in
  hate.So chary and excited
• As a thrush liked on a hawk
• We thrilled to the March twilight
• With nervous childish talk
• Still waters running deep
• Along the embankment walk.

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Analysis of Twice Shy

• This poem approaches the essence of love in a shy
  and tentative way.
  
• Heaney uses imagery to express the picturesque
  image of love.
  
• The entire second stanza is characterized by
  personification of the lovers surroundings.
  

• Heaney uses diction that would normally express
  the innocence of love to convey a darker message.
  
  
• Underscoring the poem is the idea that love is
  ephemeral.
  
• He draws a parallel between new romances and
  childlike relationships.
  
• Discusses the purity of the unspoken in terms of
  love.

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Harvest Bow

• As you plaited the harvest bow
• You implicated the mellowed silence in you
• In wheat that does not rust
• But brightens as it tightens twist by twist
• Into a knowable corona
• A throwaway love-knot of straw.
• Hands that aged round ashplants and cane sticks
• And lapped the spurs on a lifetime of game cocks
  
  
• Harked to their gift and worked with fine intent
  
  
• Until your fingers moved somnambulant
• I tell and finger it like braille
• Gleaning the unsaid off the palpable
• And if I spy into its golden loops
• I see us walk between the railway slopes
• Into an evening of long grass and midges

• Blue smoke straight up old beds and ploughs in
  hedges
  
• An auction notice on an outhouse wall--
• You with a harvest bow in your lapel
• Me with the fishing rod already homesick
• For the big lift of these evenings as your stick
  
  
• Whacking the tips off weeds and bushes
• Beats out of time and beats but flushes
• Nothing that original townland
• Still tongue-tied in the straw tied by your hand.
  
  
• The end of art is peace
• Could be the motto of this frail device
• That I have pinned up on our deal dresser--
• Like a drawn snare
• Slipped lately by the spirit of the corn
• Yet burnished by its passage and still warm.

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Analysis of Harvest Bow

• In this poem Heaney develops the idea that the
  relationship between a child and their parents is
  the most crucial development of childhood.
  
• Heaney elaborates on the idea that artistic
  tendencies exist between families which is a
  stronger bond then words that can be formed on
  paper.
• His dads many talents reveal the similarity
  between Heaneys talent and passion as a writer.
  

• Heaney uses a description of the wheat as a
  metaphor to describe the unbreakable bond between
  their relationship.
  
• This poem once again elaborates on the theme of a
  lost childhood. The memories of times with his
  father are sweeter than his current position in a
  cruel world.
• Rather than viewing this loss as a negative
  thing Heaney makes it clear that the bond
  between father and son can not be dissipated by
  mere time or knowledge of the real world.

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Digging

• Between my finger and my thumbThe squat pen
  rests as snug as a gun.Under my window a clean
  rasping soundWhen the spade sinks into gravelly
  groundMy father digging. I look downTill his
  straining rump among the flowerbedsBends low
  comes up twenty years awayStooping in rhythm
  through potato drillsWhere he was digging.The
  coarse boot nestled on the lug the shaftAgainst
  the inside knee was levered firmly.He rooted out
  tall tops buried the bright edge deepTo scatter
  new potatoes that we pickedLoving their cool
  hardness in our hands.By God the old man could
  handle a spadeJust like his old man.

• My grandfather could cut more turf in a dayThan
  any other man on Toners bog.Once I carried him
  milk in a bottleCorked sloppily with paper. He
  straightened upTo drink it then fell to right
  awayNicking and slicing neatly heaving
  sodsOver his shoulder digging down and downFor
  the good turf. Digging.The cold smell of potato
  mold the squelch and slapOf soggy peat the
  curt cuts of an edgeThrough living roots awaken
  in my head.But Ive no spade to follow men like
  them.Between my finger and my thumbThe squat
  pen rests.Ill dig with it.

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Analysis of Digging

• The poem explores the respect Heaney holds for
  his heritage.
  
• Heaney explore the parallelism between his father
  and grandfathers strength as working men and his
  place as a writer.
  
• The poem serves as an extended metaphor for
  revealing the roots of Heaneys past through the
  power of his writing.
  

• Heaney appeals to his audience through the use of
  onomatopoeia to make his descriptions more
  vivid.
  
• Heaney uses repetition in the first and last
  stanza to show his realization that his writing
  can serve as a way to discover the roots of his
  past.

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Bibliography

• FIELD WORK 1979
• A poem exploiting a political situation in
  Northern Ireland from Heaneys Catholic
  standpoint.
  
• CLEARANCES 1986
• A series of sonnets that presents stark images of
  the spaces death leaves between us through the
  use of euphemisms.
  
• THE CURE AT TROY 1991
• A version of Sophocles Philoctetes
• THE BURIAL AT THEBES 2004
• A version of Sophocles Antigone
• THE POETRY OF SEAMUS HEANEY by ELEMER ANDREWS
• Collection of critical responses to Seamus
  Heaneys poetry presenting the debates
  surrounding the poets work and popular appeal.
  

• ELEVEN POEMS 1965
• A pamphlet that coincided with the Belfast
  Festival.
  
• DEATH OF A NATURALIST 1966
• A poem discussing childhood experiences through
  revelations in nature.
  
• WINTERING OUT 1972
• A collection of poems that explores the radical
  connection between the land and the language it
  nurtures.
  
• BOG POEMS 1975
• A series of poems that studies the political and
  social situation in his native Northern Ireland.
  
  
• GOVERNMENT OF THE TONGUE SELECTED PROSE
  1978-1987
  
• An anthology discussing societal divisions among
  religion and politics and his struggle between
  creative freedom and social obligations
  

Complete List of Works
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Works Cited

• Audio Interviews - Seamus Heaney
• Books and Writers
• Harvard University Press/Seamus Heaney
• Interview with Seamus Heaney
• Literary Allusion and the Poetry of Seamus
  Heaney
  
• Seamus Heaney-Cover Page
• Themes in Seamus Heaneys Poetry
• The Seamus Heaney Page
• The Seamus Heaney Portal

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• The form of the poem in other words is crucial
  to poetrys power to do the thing which always is
  and always will be to poetrys credit the power
  to persuade that vulnerable part of our
  consciousness of its rightness in spite of the
  evidence of wrongness all around it the power to
  remind us that we are hunters and gatherers of
  values that our very solitudes and distresses
  are creditable in so far as they too are an
  earnest of our veritable human being.
• -Heaney

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