Seamus Heaney's "From the Frontier of Writing" Commentary
by
scurrvy (student)
Susic
Vanja Susic
Crown
IB World Lit
“From the Frontier of Writing” Commentary
October 25, 2012
“From the Frontier of Writing”: A Commentary
In the poem “From the Frontier of Writing”, Seamus Heaney compares the process of writing to a battlefield and the pressures that come with both. In the first four stanzas Heaney described how he is being inspected by road police that violate his privacy by interrogating him. The fifth and sixth stanzas discuss a magnified criticism of his writing through the interrogation by more specialized police offers and the pressures of being preyed on. The seventh and eighth stanzas represent that the driver is finally able to escape the wrath of the police officers, and so the writer is finally freed of the trouble and criticism that comes with writing. In “From the Frontier of Writing”, Seamus Heaney parallels driving through a battlefield and the interrogation that comes with it to the process in which a writer’s work is critiqued and accepted.
The beginning of the poem introduces the way Heaney is monitored and interrogated while he first attempts to write, and the consequential self-doubt he experiences because of these pressures. In the first line, the speaker illustrates the “tightness” and “nilness” (1) of the road he is driving. The claustrophobic diction, paired with when the “troops inspect” (2) the speaker and his car, represents the tense environment he is experiencing and the initial interrogation he receives through the comparison of a road trooper to a critic of his writing. The troops inspect insignificant details of the car, like the “make and number” (3), showing that the speaker feels that his critics are inspecting every last aspect of his work, down to insignificant details. The cataloging of the events that follow highlights the nervousness the speaker for they are hasty observations that give him child-like qualities. When the trooper approaches the speaker directly, he “[catches] sight of more/on a hill beyond” (4-5), which insists that the critique does not stop after the first is confronted. They “[eye] with intent” (5), this intimidating diction showing that the speaker feels as if they have some hidden agenda in criticizing his work. Troops in the distance hold “cradled guns” (6), and this oxymoron through the use of the delicate word “cradled” shows how precious these instruments are, just like the dangerous, inspecting eyes of Heaney’s critics. The speaker notes that everything is “pure interrogation” (7) alludes to the speaker being interviewed as a suspect in a crime, which thus compares his writing to a crime, in his critics’ perspective. When the speaker is finally able to leave this checkpoint on the road, he moves “with guarded unconcerned acceleration” (9), juxtaposing his internal feelings of repression in his writing through the word “guarded” and the façade he presents to the public, through the word “unconcerned”. The hyphen at the end of line 9, after the word “acceleration”, represents a short period of time that has passed between his interrogation by the trooper, and the revealing of his true thoughts that follow. The speaker then describes himself as “a little emptier, a little spent” (10), showing his true feelings of failure and fatigue after being inspected so closely by these critics. Commas after the words “self” (11), “subjugated” (12), and “yes” (12) serve as pauses that represent the exhaustion he feels after the long process of tackling his critics so closely. The words “subjugated” (12) and “obedient” (12) are an admittance of how Heaney follows the criticism of those who judge him, and show how at this point he wants to change his writing to fit the expectations of his critics.
