Looking at the poems in Death of a Naturalist discuss how Heaney use’s language and poetic technique to explore the themes of childhood and loss of innocence.

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Looking at the poems in Death of a Naturalist discuss how Heaney use’s language and poetic technique to explore the themes of childhood and loss of innocence.

“Death of a Naturalist” Seamus Heaney’s first collection of poetry was published in 1966, while he was a lecturer at Queens University. It was immediately accepted as a unique and remarkable work of literature. Seamus Heaney was just twenty-seven years old. The work is considered with the loss of childhood innocence and the moment into adulthood and all that such a journey includes. The poem gives reason to the reader why the poet has become a writer, his admiration for his ancestors and the young Seamus Haney’s view of nature. Poems in “Death of a Naturalist” are all concerned with the themes of childhood and loss of innocence. Heaney writes about many aspects of his life as a child including working with his father – “follower”- watching his father and grand father work – “Digging” – going  “blackberry picking” and seeing kittens drown – “Early purges”. Heaney's poems are centred around the rural Irish landscape of his childhood, and the time honoured traditions that are an everyday part of Irish peasant life. His poems often convey a feeling of guilt, because they are quite negative and dark, depicting his breaking of this tradition. One of the reasons why he is so widely know is because he makes the text come alive with his feelings, in spite of the fact that his techniques are quite complicated. He uses structural techniques to emphasise his point. For example, in “Blackberry Picking” there is a formal, mechanical structure, just like the annual ritual of going out to pick blackberries.
In all of his poems he tries to convey his feelings about his experience and also how he was changed as a result of them.

But it is not only his techniques, which his poems have in common. His mood-changes prevail. In "The Early Purges", the first half of the poem sees Heaney as a vulnerable child: “I was six when I first saw...” and “Suddenly frightened...” While, in the second half he is looking back negatively as an adult: “Until I forgot them...” Another structural technique, which Heaney uses, is enjanbement, where the lines of the poem run into each other, creating a fluid text for the reader. In “Blackberry Picking”, we again notice the use of the child theme in the first verse. As a child picking blackberries, he thinks of nothing else. His entire world revolves around blackberries and he is willing to sacrifice everything for his obsession: “Sent us out with milk-cans, pea tins, jam pots where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.” For instance, he is not deterred by the hard labour suggested by the onomatopoeia of the hard “k” sounds in the line: “We trekked and picked...”

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In the poem “Digging” Heaney is seeing his father dig, which reminds him of his childhood and how his father dug up potatoes. His father is described digging with great skill “by God the old man could handle a spade”. The Job ran through the family to his grand father, His father had dug and with great skill “just like his old man”. Heaney mentions his grandfather with pride “My grandfather cut more turf in a day than any other man on Toner’s bog.”  The poem gives ...

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