Erin Go Bragh: Seamus Heaney

Hey,
So I've been holding off reading Seamus Heaney for far too long. I originally first heard of Heaney when I read his version of Beowulf for my classics lit course. His work with that adaptation was epic but still capture the violence and bloodiness of old school mythological heroics. It's the standard now and should be read by everyone.

Here's some background on Seamus Heaney:
*Heaney was born in 1939 in Northern Ireland.
*He won a scholarship to a catholic boarding school. While he was away his 4 year old brother Christopher was killed in a roadside accident.
*He ended up studying and lecturing at Queen's University in Belfast.
*He started publishing poetry in 1962, with his first book being published in 1965.
*In 1995 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
*In 1996 Beowulf: A New Translation is published to great success.

Now really these are just facts. What I find interesting about Heaney is that although he grew up in Northern Ireland he sees himself as Irish rather than British. In fact he asked to be removed from the Penguin Book of Contemporary British Poetry by writing:

"Be advised, my passport's green / No glass of ours was ever raised / To toast the Queen."

The civil war in Northern Ireland was particularly contentious during the 1960s and 70s when bombs and death became commonplace. His poetry is not often overtly political or militant, and is far more concerned with profound observations of the small details of the everyday, far beyond contingent political concerns. He also focuses on history and tries to put the Irish heritage into a larger context of an agricultural society. He also focuses on the tension of the Ulster Industrial Revolution and the tension that it causes between these two dueling developing cultures.

I decided that this St. Pat's I would finally pull down my Seamus Heaney Selected Poems 1966-1987. I was captured by two poems early in this collection: "Digging" and "Mid-Term Break."

I particularly enjoyed "Digging" for how it linked his agricultural roots to his current work as a writer. He cannot match “men like them” with a spade, but he sees that the pen is (for him) mightier, and with it he will dig into his past and celebrate them. Heaney challenges the stereotype of the "paddy with the spade." He sees the dignity, work ethic, and expertise of the agricultural Irishmen. This poem also showcases Heaney's early use of onomatopoeia (where the sound resembles or suggests meaning) in “rasping”, “gravelly”, “sloppily”, “squelch” and “slap”.

Another stand out of Heaney's early work is "Mid-Term Break" which was published in 1966. This work is about the accidental death of his infant brother and the families reaction. He is embarassed and uncomfortable at first with his father's weakness in grieving. In a gender reversal it is his mother's anger that keeps her from crying. Neither parent acts in ways that young Heaney (who was in his teens at the time) expects them too. As a young man he's caught between what he expects and what actually occurs in tragic circumstance. Later he is alone with his brother's corpse and can act naturally. A transferred epithet changes a "bruise" to a poppy that the "sleeping" boy "wears" as if he could take it off. Heaney likens the bruise to the poppy, a flower linked with death and soothing of pain (opiates come from poppies). At the end of the poem Heaney is able to grieve honestly as he poignantly writes in the last line that the size of the coffin is the measure of the child's life.

This poem also has a clear formal structure which makes it a contrast to "Digging." In "Digging" Heaney uses an informal stanza structure where each line is only as long as it needs to be. There's no rhythm or iambic pentameter at work, whereas "Mid-Term Break" is in 3 line stanzas. "Break" has occasional rhymes with the last two lines forming a couplet. "Digging" has none, which seems to emphasize the more rural subject matter. The loose iambic rhymes of "Break" seem to bring out the sadness of the loss of a child. Heaney showcases his skill by being able to utilize all the aspects at his disposal in order to bring his themes home.