Discuss the presentation of place in the two Seamus Heaney poems named Broagh and The Other Side
Discuss the presentation of place in the two Seamus Heaney poems named Broagh and The Other Side In the majority of Seamus Heaney poems, the presentation of a place or setting is very important. In both of these poems, it is evident throughout. In Broagh, the Irish poetic technique named Dinnshenchas is employed, the literal Irish meaning being "place lore". Through this, the poet explores the naming of the place and can often draw parallels between the name of the place and the setting's characteristics. In Broagh, the description portrays a wild piece of land, unkept and uncultivated, with phrases such as broad docken. This image is reflected by the name of the place, Broagh. It has a rough ending, which also happens to be rather hard to say for those not familiar with the Irish tongue, just as they would find it difficult to manage such a wild piece of land. Here is where I believe both the place and its name are becoming one. In The Other Side, Dinnshenchas isn't used. In its place, a more typical, deep description of the place. The place itself isn't actually named, but its apparent it's farmland, with describing the land as acres(acres in reference to how much land they farm) and the reference to their being a divider(stream) between theirs and their neighbours. This is where I shall make my first parallel between the two poems. Through the description use din both, it
Ancestral Photograph - Seamus Heaney.
Ancestral Photograph - Seamus Heaney . The poet, Seamus Heaney, is describing his great-uncle from an old photograph that has been on the wall for decades. He is in a pensive mood, thinking about his family's history and his own involvement in it. 2. The picture created of the man is not an attractive one. The opening sentence to the poem, "Jaws puff round and solid as a turnip" makes it seem as if the face is completely smooth, without any interesting features - just like a "turnip". "Jaws puff round" gives the reader an impression that the great-uncle's face is bloated and flabby. The next sentence in the first stanza, "Dead eyes are statue's" suggests that the man is lifeless and that he has a blank expression on his face. The reader also gets the impression that Seamus Heaney's great-uncle is rather unpleasant from the words: "the upper lip bullies the heavy mouth down to a droop". "Droop" might suggest that he is possibly unhappy. The next line: "Whose look has two parts scorn, two parts dead pan" further confirms that the man in the photograph is disagreeable with a vacant look. The last line of this stanza reveals that the man is probably not wealthy because he is wearing a "silver watch chain". 3. In stanza 2, Heaney decides to take down the photograph. When he does remove it from the wall, Heaney declares that "there is a faded patch where he has been". Heaney uses
Write an essay on Heaney's poetry in the light of his statement that it represents a "search for images and symbols adequate to our predicament".
Write an essay on Heaney's poetry in the light of his statement that it represents a "search for images and symbols adequate to our predicament". Seamus Heaney has identified the precise moment at which the process of writing poetry "moved from being simply a matter of achieving the satisfactory verbal icon to being a search for images and symbols adequate to our predicament."1 It was the "summer of 1969", when the "original heraldic murderous encounter between Protestant yeoman and Catholic rebel was...initiated again".2 Thus the predicament to which Heaney refers in his statement is specifically the resurrection of the sectarian violence that has plagued Northern Ireland for centuries. However, the poetry of Seamus Heaney is not exclusively concerned with the political climate of his birthplace: it is merely one of a number of concerns that informs his verse. The quest for symbols to communicate the crisis in Northern Ireland at that time forms only a part of the poet's repertoire, and is primarily manifested in the collection North, although it does also find expression in other collections. In both earlier in later work, Heaney conducts a search for adequate expression of other concerns, whether this expression is through the conceived symbol or by way of a more unobtrusive conversational style. 'Requiem for the Croppies' foreshadows Heaney's fascination with the
Comparing and contrasting
Comparing and contrasting "Digging" and "The Follower" In this essay I will be giving quotes and explaining about two pieces of poetry, written by Seamus Heaney. The two poems I will be writing on will contrast and his memories on his rural childhood. The poems will be "the follower" which takes us back to Heaney as a child wanting to follow in his father's footsteps. I will also be writing on "digging", which takes us back once again to his farm but instead not wanting to follow in his fathers footsteps So basically I will be writing about how the poems contrast to his rural childhood and I'll explain the quotes and the poems. I will firstly however give you a bit of an insight to Heaney's life Seamus Heaney was born April 13, 1939, at Mossbawn, about thirty miles northwest of Belfast, in Northern Ireland. His first book, Death of a Naturalist, was published in 1966. Heaney is the author of numerous collections of poetry, three volumes of criticism, and The Cure at Troy, a version of Sophocles' Philoctetes. He is a Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and held the chair of Professor of Poetry at Oxford from 1989 to 1994. In 1995, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature. A resident of Dublin since 1976, he spends part each year teaching at Harvard University, where he was elected the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory in 1984. In "The
A comparison of 'Midterm break' and 'The early purges' by Seamus Heaney
Other cultures assignment. A comparison of 'Midterm Break' and 'The Early Purges' by Seamus Heaney For this assignment we have studied two poems by Seamus Heaney. Both of these poems are linked because they are about Heaney's early memories of death and how he coped with these difficult situations when he was a young. The subject matter of the poem 'Midterm Break' is about his brother's death. It also tells us about his feelings about this death. Heaney is away at boarding school. Waiting in the college sick bay. Heaney writes 'At two 'o' clock our neighbours drove me home'. Which shows that his parents were unable to come to pick him up as they might have been held up with something. Heaney wanted to express his feelings, to let us know what he felt like having to cope with the death of his little brother. It must have been a particularly difficult situation for him. There is a lot of sadness in the poem from the beginning. Heaney writes of 'bells knelling classes to a close'. 'Knelling is a sound of funeral bells, not a school bell. This indicates that Heaney is going to a funeral. The first person he encounters is his farther 'crying', this is an unusual sight for him. "He always took funerals in his stride". This shows he's been to other funerals, but he has not been affected in the same way. Heaney also remembers a family friend commenting on the death as a 'hard
Compare And Contrast Seamus Heaney's Poems 'Digging' And 'Follower'.
Compare And Contrast Seamus Heaney's Poems 'Digging' And 'Follower' Seamus Heaney's poems, 'Digging' and 'Follower' portray to us the strong relationship between the father and son, as Heaney tends to look up to the elders in his family. Both poems create that pastoral atmosphere with the title, 'Digging' suggests delving into the past. 'Follower' on the other hand gives us an image of the child's view of farming. The poems suggest Heaney's father is skilled at manual labour, and therefore someone to be looked up to. The poem 'Follower' illustrates the strength and skill, possessed by Heaney's father. The poem 'Digging' suggests the immense skill needed to master working in the countryside. The rhythm in 'Digging' tends to match the digging of the spade; where as in 'Follower' it tends to match the size and supremacy of Heaney's father. Both 'Digging' and 'Follower' tell us stories, which are similar but yet different. This poem 'Digging' is quite similar to 'Follower' as it shows how young Heaney looked up to his elders. Heaney sees his grandfather as old, "straining" to dig "flowerbeds". The poet recalls his father digging "potato drills" and his grandfather digging peat. Heaney knows he can't match "men like them with a spade," knowing the pen is mightier for him, and he will dig into the past with it. Heaney also shows the skill and distinction needed in manual
Follower by Seamus Heaney
Follower Seamus Heaney The follower is written by the Irish poet Seamus Heaney, the poem is about the poets love and admiration for his father. The poem is also about the changes that occur between father and children as children move out from their parent's shadow. We learn a lot about both the relationship that existed between them and the way Heaney saw his family. In the first half of the poem Heaney presents us with a vivid portrait of his father as he appeared to the poet as a young boy. The poet, as a young boy, follows his father as he goes about his work and like most boys, he idolises his father and admires his great skill, ` an expert` with the horse-plough and Heaney as a little boy would simply get in his fathers way. In the poem, Heaney looks up to his father in a physical sense, because he is so much smaller than his father, but he also looks up to him in a metaphorical sense. This is made clear by the poet's careful choice of words. 'His eye narrowed and angled at the ground, mapping the furrows exactly.' These words effectively suggest his father's skill and precision. We are also told that young Heaney 'stumbled in his hob-nailed wake,' which brings to our mind a picture of the ploughman's heavy boots, the carefully ploughed furrow and the child's clumsy enthusiasm. The poet uses onomatopoeic words to capture the details of his father as he works the
The poem
The poem "Death of Naturalist" was written by a well known Irish poet Seamus Heaney. The title "Death of a Naturalist" gives us a sense of loss. The opening line "All year the flax-dam festered in the heart" gives us specific detail like in Blackberry picking. The alliteration in the first line such as flax-dom and festered links in with the second stanza. Flax-dom is an onomatopoeia and festered has association of sickness and decay. It contrasts with the happy description in the first stanza when he recalls collecting the frogspawn. He builds up this specific place and location. The image of the flax rotting is an image of the cycle of nature. We see him coming to the terms with the death of nature in both of his poems. When he mentions the bubbles gargled delicately; delicately contrasts with the flax festering and gargled is onomatopoeia. Also he mentions that the "Bluebottles wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell", gaze is a very powerful and effective image. It unites two sensory images that are sight and sound. The smell is off the rotten flax. The listing effect Heaney uses; dragonflies and spotted butterflies show the child's attraction, he also uses the listing effect in Blackberry picking. The word slobber he uses is onomatopoeia and he uses onomatopoeias quite often in his poems. He talks about the clotted water which is thick water that has black
Mid-Term Break by Seamus Heaney.
Mid-Term Break by Seamus Heaney. 'Mid-Term Break' by the poet Seamus Heaney is about a personal experience that he has encountered. It deals with the issues of life and death in a family and also how different people cope. The title at first suggests that the poem is going to be about a holiday, but as you get into the poem further, you realise that the title has a far deeper and darker meaning... In the first stanza, we learn that Seamus Heaney is in a college sick bay waiting to be picked up. You get suspicious when he is being picked up his neighbour, which could indicate that something serious has happened. Time is passing slowly, and Heaney uses alliteration to show this. "Counting bells knelling classes to a close." Already so early in the poem, we sense that something is wrong due to the poets word choice of 'knelling'. Knelling is when a church bell rings to signify a funeral. The clues become more apparent as you move through the stanzas, and are very effective in arousing your suspicions. When Seamus Heaney arrives home, he is greeted by his father crying on the porch. A stereotypical male would usually hold back his feelings and Heaney uses parenthesis to show this. "In the porch i met my father crying ---He had always taken funerals in his stride--- And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow." Obviously something had caused him great pain, and
'Mid-term Break' by Seamus Heaney - review
'Mid-term Break' by Seamus Heaney 'Mid-term Break' is a biographical poem. It is about Seamus Heaney as a child coming back from boarding school and discovering his four-year-old brother has been hit by a car and died. "At two o'clock our neighbours drove me home." This is the first event that tells us that something is not right. Neighbours won't usually pick up boarders; it would usually probably be the parents or a relative. This immediately creates a sort of mystery to the poem and makes you ask questions. It makes you want to read on to find out what it is that's wrong. Why are they neighbours picking him up? " In the porch I met my father crying-" This must have been a shock because fathers are often there as a figure to look up to. Seeing a father cry is rare and it confirms that something dreadful has happened. "He had always taken funerals in his stride" This referring to the previous quote about his father shows that he is strong and doesn't easily get upset. It also answers our question about what has happened- someone has died. It also implies that the father ahs lost people in the past as it says that he was fine at past funerals. This line creates more questions. Who has died? How have they died? "The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram" This is so effective because it gives a contrast between the father, who is obviously devastated, and
