What does Heaney reveal about his attitudeto his past in the poems I have studied?

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What does Heaney reveal about his attitude to his past in the poems I have studied?

Seamus Heaney is a very well known Irish naturalist poet and the poems that I have read of his mainly focus on his past, and the farming traditions in his family. In this essay I am going to use the two poems ‘Digging’ and ‘Follower’ to discuss what Heaney reveals about his attitude towards his past.

      The poem ‘Digging’ has a very tight structure, which Heaney uses to talk in detail about his father.

“An expert. He would set the wing

And fit the bright steel-pointed sock

The sod rolled over without breaking”

This quote clearly shows that the poem has an A, B rhyme which reflects the steady rhythm of the digging itself. Using rhyme in this poem almost echoes the sound when ‘the spade sinks into the gravely ground.’ Heaney then changes to free verse in the fourth stanza.

“The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft

Against the inside knee was levered firmly

He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep

To scatter new potatoes that we picked”

The free verse makes the main body of ‘Digging’ more powerful to the reader. I think this is because of the effect the rhythm change has. Heaney begins ‘Digging’ with the first two stanza’s having clear rhyme in them. He rhymes ‘thumb’ and ‘gun’, and then ‘sound’ and ‘ground’. Heaney is also writing in the present tense as he talks about how under his window he hears ‘a clean rasping sound’ whilst he writes the poem. However in the third stanza Heaney starts to talk about the past and his memories. He now changes to using free verse. As this changes comes after reading the first two stanza’s of rhyme the free verse feels almost out of place and confused which then gives the effect that Heaney may feel uncomfortable to recall his past or he may just be straining to remember it.  

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          In ‘Digging’ there are three men featured: these are Heaney, his father and Heaney’s grandfather. Heaney is a sound driven poet and uses many onomatopoetic words and phrases. He evokes the memory of his father in the opening lines:

“Under my window a clean rasping sound

When the spade sinks into gravely ground”

I feel that this sound is made so vivid that you really can hear a spade digging deep into gravely ground. This is made clear not only by the use of onomatopoeia but also by the use of alliteration. By using the ...

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