Michael Woods writes about ALL of Heaney's Poems

With the exception of ‘Perch’, all the poems are taken from Heaney’s first collection, Death of a Naturalist, published in 1966 when he was twenty-seven. As such, there is a coherence in the examination board’s selection. It would be a great pity, though, to limit yourself to reading only these poems as they do not reflect the tremendous range of Heaney’s poetic output.

It is important to differentiate between those poems that are clearly autobiographical in nature, and have been acknowledged as such by Heaney, and those poems that are not. “Storm on the Island” and “At a Potato Digging” are clearly not autobiographical in their stance. In general, one should be very careful when considering the use of the first person in poetry as it can lead to naïve or mistaken readings.

STORM ON THE ISLAND

Heaney writes in the voice of an islander (but one who seems representative of the island’s population) describing a way of like, the ravaging effects of a storm and the experience of living in a remote place.

There is a robust confidence at the beginning of the poem “We are prepared” suggests that the islanders are certainly ready to face a storm but their practices have clearly come about as a result of experience. This weather has conditioned their lives to the extent that it influences their architecture and farming methods. The way people deal with their environment is inevitably conditioned by the climate in which they live. The landscape of the island presented in the poem is bleak and exposed to the elements. The opening word “we” suggests a collective, cultural voice of solidarity; a community facing a common enemy that is the unpredictably tempestuous weather.

The landscape is inhospitable and bleak, allowing what we might consider subsistence without luxury. We are told that “The wizened earth” is too barren to yield hay. There are no “stacks” or “stooks” of it. We are also introduced to the extreme power of nature, isolation and the difference between real and perceived danger. On the one hand, the storm and its power are invisible and therefore a “huge nothing” (line 19) but, on the other, the effect on the island is palpable both in physical and psychological ways. The islanders have to adapt their farming practices to take account of the potentially ruinous effects of storms. For example, houses are built “squat” (line 1) their walls are well founded in “rock” (line 2) and they are roofed with heavy slate.

The idea of exposure and danger is well realised in throughout poem. An island is by its very nature, more acutely affected by rough weather than a much greater non-coastal land mass. There is not even the consolation of the company of trees that can “raise a tragic chorus in a gale” (line 8) to distract the listener from the alarming reality that the wind “pummels” houses as well as the surrounding landscape. This chorus reminds us the sort of lamentation of a Greek tragedy and as such reinforced the mournful atmosphere being created. A chorus in Greek tragedy also had the function of making sense of events, interpreting. Here, the absence of any anchor point leaves us with the sense that the islanders lack anything that might divert their attention away form the reality of their situation. It seems that they alone are prey to the gale.

The sea is inhospitable. It is described by Heaney as “Exploding comfortably down the cliffs” (line 13). The verb “exploding” is an image associated with the ordinance of war, something that is developed in subsequent lines. Explosions seem natural to the personified sea, which serves to reinforce how disconcerting it is for the querulous people on the receiving end of the storm’s onslaught. The manner in which weather can change very quickly as a storm begins is conveyed through the image of “a tame cat / Turned savage” (lines 15-16). We are all aware of how something as apparently benign as a domestic cat is capable of changing instantly into a violent creature, if provoked. The islanders endure the storm and “sit tight” (line 16). The untrammelled power of the storm is suggested through the powerfully alliterated sounds of “spray”, “hits”, “spits” and “cat”.

Assaulted by nature, the island is presented as being under attack. Extended military metaphor presents the storm as a fighter plane that “strafes invisibly”. This is reinforced with “strafed” and “bombarded”, terms normally used to describe a fighter pilot’s use of machine gun and bombs. This very violent imagery makes the storm seem like an air force seeking to wreak havoc upon the island. Heaney highlights the mysterious power of the wind by writing that it is “empty air” and “a huge nothing” that is the source of all this feared havoc. This poem does not simply concern itself with a storm on an island but engages with the idea that however practical and rooted we may be, there are forces beyond us that are ultimately more powerful and more unknowable than we are. This poem contemplates upon the power of nature and its effects on the human imagination as well those on the immediate environment.

The tone of the poem is conversational as befits a dramatic monologue. At one point the islander is clearly talking as if sharing a confidence with someone when he says, “you know what I mean” (line 7).

Heaney evokes atmosphere very powerfully and challenges idealised thinking about living on an island. This island is not a romantic retreat but somewhere to endure. We cannot always expect good weather in life. There will be times when we are required to call upon all our resources, our inner strength and to conquer our fear.

It suggests a blasted landscape, perhaps one of the Arran islands off the West coast of Ireland.

The houses have to be

Stooks – these are pyramidal shaped arrangement of hay in a field. Interestingly, Heaney uses the word employed by Gerard Manley Hopkins in his poem ‘Hurrahing in Harvest’. Here, of course, Heaney is drawing attention to the fact that there can be no hurrahing as there is no harvest.

PERCH (Electric Light 2001)

This poem is taken from Heaney’s eleventh collection, Electric Light, which was published in 2001. Its subject is perch, the freshwater fish characterised by their stripy bodies and very sharp, spiny dorsal fins. The theme of the poem is the marvellous equipoise in nature that is paradoxically constant because of its constant change. There is also a clear sense of an appreciation of beauty in a particular place. Earth and water form the landscape chose details are quickly conveyed visually. Heaney uses the compound “alder-dapple” which both specifies the trees to be found on the bank of the River Bann (‘Bann’ is the Gaelic word for white) and their appearance as they sway or “waver”, a word which precisely captures the sense of flow that will develop later in the poem.

Not only is there a clear sense of a particular place established in the first couplet of this short ten line poem but also an insight into the shared language of the poet and those with him when he visited through the use of the word ‘grunts’ instead of perch. Apart from the sonic suggestion of the word, it is also one used by American soldiers to describe new recruits. Heaney’s description of the perch as “little flood-slubs, runty and ready” gives the impression of pugnacious little creatures ready to take on anything whatever its size. A slub is a slightly twisted roll of fibre, an image that gives a clear visual picture of the sinuous, flexing shape of the perch as viewed from above. The refracting quality of water in a river also has the effect making fish appear fatter and foreshortened.

Heaney is describing a return to the River Bann where he used to go fishing in his youth. “I saw and I see”, connects the past with the present with the suggestion that they are, in a sense, balanced. We might be reminded of “see-saw” by association. Also, the poem is written as a single sentence from start to finish so that there is a sense of the seamless connection between everything that is symbolised in the river’s movement, “In the everything flows and steady go of the world”. (line 10) There is an internal dynamic in everything, “flows” and “go” suggest movement and action while “steady” suggests constancy and stability. Here, Heaney deftly captures the idea that the only constant we can be sure of is change itself but may be reassured that this is all part of what is the imperative underpinning our world.

There is also a sense of the miraculous as Heaney describes remembering and seeing again, “the river’s glorified body / That is passable through. This centres on the idea that water is physical and weighty yet apparently without boundary, its anatomy invisible. The phrase “glorified body” is one traditionally associated with Christ after the resurrection and this only serves to reinforce the highly charged sense of the extraordinary that is perceived in what can easily be taken for granted. Water is synonymous with that which sustains life and, for the perch, this is obviously so. The revisiting of this river is also a renovating experience for the poet.

The title of the poem is ambiguous as it both names the fish that are ostensibly its subject but it is also a verb to denote a state of rest or poise. Normally associated with birds, these fish seem to be perched on the invisible as they achieve a stable position in the powerful flow of the river. The fish observed in their own element of water seem to be perched almost as birds might be in their own element of air:

In the finland of perch, the fenland of alder, on air
That is water..”

(lines 8-9)

Here, Heaney employs the consonance of “finland” and “fenland” to signal that not only is a river the natural element for fish but it is like another country. It is no accident that he has chosen to call the river after a country, in doing this he also taps into the linguistic energy of Anglos-Saxon poetry, in which images known as kennings were employed. For example, the sea was known as the “whale road”. So, “finland” conveys both a sense of the otherness of the perch’s environment but also suggests a river densely populated with them..

We know, though, that there is a subtle complexity of processes in the fish that allow it remain steady:

“Guzzling the current, against it, all muscle and slur”

(line 7).

The half-rhyme in the poem helps to reinforce the idea of equipoise and this is something that is maintained throughout. The unstable demarcation between the ancient idea of the elements is taken further by Heaney when he writes of “air / That is water” (lines 8-9).

The concluding line is both celebratory of the kinetic aspect of nature and allusive. “All things flow” (Gk: hen panta rei) is the famous statement of the Greek pre-Socratic philosopher, Heraclitus of Ephesus who maintained that everything is in a constant state of flux. He also famously said, “You cannot step twice into the same river.” Another of his surviving fragments says, “The death of air is the borth of water”. Heaney seems to have these ideas in mind as he revisits the Bann, the same river as he visited years before but the current of time has moved everything on, just as the water in a river is constantly flowing. The perch seem to be objects of admiration, as they appear to be able to master the current, achieve stasis in the face of flux.

Allusion – a reference to another writer or work made in a poem or other text. It is rather like a quotation but is subtler, being assimilated into the fabric of the poem, as the reference to Heraclitus is here.

BLACKBERRY PICKING

The activity described in the poem is very familiar to most people. It is a childhood memory of picking blackberries. Heaney moves from a description of the activity to a reflection upon the manner in which the reality of disappointment is something that has to be dealt with as we grow up. Heaney addresses the transience of beauty and the manner in which our relationship with the world becomes less naïve and more complicated as we mature.

There is a recurrence of blood imagery in the poem and this operates in a symbolically complex manner. On the one hand, blood is obviously associated with the life force. The first ripe blackberry is described as “a glossy purple clot”. Heaney concentrates upon the sensual experience of eating new fruit, employing a simile to capture the taste of the berry’s “flesh” that “was sweet / Like thickened wine” (lines 5-6). Heaney’s use of the second person (“You ate that first one”) invites the reader to identify with the experience described which also has the effect of leaving that reader implicated in some sense, too. Certainly, there is a movement from simple enthusiasm to something of rapaciousness. The idea that “summer’s blood” was in the flesh of this first blackberry of the season is immediately followed by the reporting of the effects of picking it. The pickers’ tongues have “stains” (line 7) upon them, and we are immediately reminded of bloodstains. The word “lust” in the same line clearly conveys the manner in which those engaged in picking the blackberries are somehow possessed by a desire to strip the entire bush. Heaney is exploring both childish enthusiasm and the awakening eroticism in what appears to be a pre-adolescent persona. Once the hunt is on, “lust” is “replaced by “hunger” and the people depicted in the poem, presumably a group of siblings, set out to gather fruit. The sense that any container that came to hand was quickly taken form the family kitchen by the enthusiastic group is convincingly captured as we are told that “milk-cans, pea-tins and jam-pits” are taken out on the expedition through the “briar2” and “wet grass” that “bleached” the pickers’ boots. This is all finely observed detail. We are easily able to identify with the rushed grabbing of a container once we have it our minds to go in search of blackberries, just as we have seen the white tide mark that water from wet grass leaves on leather boots. There is a perfectly iambic rhythm in line 10 that sets u a curious tension between the agreeableness of the task in hand and the difficulty that has to be overcome in order to achieve it. There is physical pain and endurance required of the blackberry picker; the bush does not yield up its fruit without scarifying those who have “lust for / Picking…” (lines 7-8).

As is the case in several of Heaney’s poems focussing upon childhood, a dual perspective emerges in that we are given simultaneous insights into the adult and child in the personae presented. In common with ‘Death of a Naturalist’, this poem reflects upon the transience of innocence and the realities of bitter experience. There is a clear debt to William Wordsworth’s famous poem. ‘The Prelude’ in which there is a sense of retributive justice meted out by nature for crimes the guilty child believes her has committed. In Wordsworth’s case, he recalls being aware of “low breathings” following him after stealing a boat and these were, he records, “a trouble to my dreams”.

The poem, in common with ‘Death of a Naturalist’ has a bipartite structure. The first verse paragraph is largely descriptive of what seems to be a carefree experience but there is a subtle build up towards a sense of guilt that is associated with both sexuality and murder. Heaney describes “palms as sticky as Bluebeard’s, an infamous pirate in a story who killed several of his wives. The blackberries “burned / Like a plate of eyes” indicating that the speaker felt guilty about the “cache” (line 19) of berries. There is, too, a sense of initiation. The second verse paragraph explores the implications and results of picking the berries: what was once sweet turns sour. In some measure, this is a straightforward reflection upon the transition from innocence to experience but there is also a rather disturbing sense that nature is not uncomplicated, it exacts a kind of nemesis. This is certainly explicit in ‘Death of a Naturalist’ where the child “knew” that if he dipped his hand that “the spawn would clutch it”. The “rat-grey fungus that grows on the berries as they ferment in the byre is sinister and associated with fear. The fact that Heaney present is “glutting on our cache” presents a resentful response that is developed in the foot stamping outburst in the second verse paragraph where the growing child erupts with, “I felt it wasn’t fair / That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.” (lines 22-3). The “fresh berries” have turned from “sweet” to “sour”. It is a truism that life is not all sweet but it is one that we all have to learn as individuals. The earlier promise of “thickened wine” becomes “stinking juice”, and that which was once so attractive becomes repellent, as the reality of the situation has to be dealt with.

DEATH OF A NATURALIST

The death referred to in this poem is metaphorical and refers to the loss of innocent enthusiasm of a child as the realities of life begin to be sensed but not quite understood. A naturalist is, of course, someone who spends time enthusiastically studying nature. The idea of collecting and observing natural things and, notably, frogspawn is an almost universal activity in primary schools.

This poem is partly about the transition from innocence to experience and the fact that, as we grow up, we must come to terms with what might be unpalatable realities. In this poem, it is the reality of sexuality that “invades” the child’s consciousness. He is terrified at the end of the poem, being convinced that the “angry frogs” will seek vengeance for his having taken their spawn. And here is another facet of experience explored by Heaney in a more direct manner than in ‘Blackberry Picking’; it is that of punishment for deeds done. The fact that the child believed the frogs “Were gathered there for vengeance” and that he “knew” the spawn would “clutch” his hand suggests that he felt, in part at least, that he deserved their “vengeance”. This clearly shows that the child’s relationship with nature is sometimes a problematic one. The metamorphosis of the tadpoles into frogs corresponds in the poem to the change in the child’s perceptions as he sees the site of generation.

Despite the secure and untroubled presentation of the child’s primary school experience, there is an undertone of threat in the first six lines of the poem that pave the way for the much more openly aggressive aspects of the second section. The verbs “festered”, “rotted” and “sweltered” convey very effectively the effect of the “punishing sun”. It is the imagined punitive aspect of nature that scares the child at the end of the poem. Lines 5 and 6 foreground details that would surely be fascinating to the young naturalist. Not only does Heaney give precise visual images, he creates a very accurate soundscape. The plosive alliterated b’s that link “Bubbles” and “bluebottles” is joined by the throaty “gargled” which is leavened by the adjective “delicately”. Line 6 employs the technique of synaesthesia (literally “senses together”) in order to make the atmosphere tangible so that we are given a simultaneous visual and aural experience of the flies that “Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell”.

The idea that underpins the poem is encapsulated in Wordsworth’s famous couplet from The Prelude (Book 1) in which he says:

Fair seed time had my soul and I grew up
Fostered alike by beauty and by fear.

Wordsworth presents, in natural terms, the idea of a plant being nurtured from a seed and links this to his personal growth through childhood and beyond. He carefully signals, though, that he experienced both “beauty” and “fear”. In the same way, Heaney writes about being entranced by the variegated beauty of nature as well as its frightening dimension.

In the first section of the poem, the young child’s sense of wonder and beauty is focused upon. He is nurtured in the context of innocence in an environment that is presided over by the protective presence of Miss Walls who preserves the children’s’ innocence by telling them that the way frogs reproduce simply involves a male frog croaking and the female laying eggs. No mention of the sexual reality is mentioned. The naïve view of the child is further emphasised in the fact that he attaches no more significance to the frogs’ reproductive process than to the idea that they might signal the weather: “For they were yellow in the sun and brown / In rain.”

The rhythm of the verse in lines 7-10 reflects the breathless enthusiasm of the child recounting the details of his naturalist’s investigations. There is real relish in the sense data of experience. Heaney marshals the noise of consonant and vowel to great effect in lines 8-9: “But best of all was the warm thick slobber / Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water…” The assonantal associations of sound capture the globular shape of the spawn as well as its tactile quality that is like mucus. Of course, that which is perceived as best becomes worst as the “great slime kings…gathered…for vengeance”.

The emergence of tadpoles form the spawn is conveyed in precise terms, too. The child would:

“wait and watch until
The fattening dots burst into nimble-
Swimming tadpoles.”

(lines 13-15)

The alliterated w’s and b’s capture first the sense of protracted anticipation and then the eruption of the egg sacs as the tadpoles “burst” into their motile life. The short “i” sound in “nimble” and “swimming” reinforce the sense of freed action as the next stage in metamorphosis is effected.

There is a definite break between the two verse paragraphs beyond the obvious typographical division. The word “Then” signals a change and the adjectives “hot”, “rank”, “angry” and “coarse” communicate the effect on the child who had previously been innocently engaged with nature. There is also a shift form a female to a male imperative as the sounds we hear are prefaced as a “bass chorus”. A clear sense of male threat is evident here. There is an ominous atmosphere created and the sinister undertones detectable in the first paragraph become a more palpable threat through the imagery of potential violence and destruction. The frogs are described as being “cocked / On sods” (lines ) as if they are guns ready to be discharged. The sense of disgust and fear encapsulated in the sentence, “I sickened, turned and ran.” Is prepared for in Heaney’s lexical choices. The frogs are “gross-bellied” and an almost saurian impression is conveyed in “their loose necks pulsed like sails”. The words “hopped”, “slap” and “plop” suggest something of a drain or cistern where waste is egested. This idea is clinched in the shocking image of the frogs’ mouths being seen by the child as anuses discharging a foul afflatus with “their blunt heads farting”. The frogs are now seen as “The great slime kings” who “Were gathered there for vengeance”. There is no doubt in the child’s mind that he will be punished for taking spawn to out on the windowsill at school: “I knew / That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.”

The safe and enclosed world presided over by Miss Walls has become a dangerous place of exposure for the developing child. Security changes to threat just as the tadpoles metamorphose into frogs.

This poem signals a clear acknowledgement of the complexities of the awakening of sexual awareness and the simultaneous sense of loss and revulsion that is also linked to initiation in some way. The child will somehow have to negotiate a pathway through the kingdom of slime that leaves behind the classroom vision of nature that concentrates on the appeal of “dragonflies and spotted butterflies”. The young naturalist is annihilated by the real imperatives of life that show themselves to him somewhat prematurely. This rings true as there is a universal identification with the idea that childhood is raided too soon by the knowledge of the adult.

DIGGING

This is the first poem in Heaney’s first collection and it may be thought of as a poet’s credo or manifesto, in much the same way as W B Yeats’s ‘A Coat’ Here, Heaney sets out on his project of following his vocation. The spade/pen metaphor is worked right through the poem. His sense of the past is clearly articulated in the way he recalls “living roots” which are literally those that are cut through by his father and grandfather as they dig and dug and the metaphorical roots that constitute his cultural heritage, one that is rooted in agriculture.

From his window, the poet sees his father digging and this triggers memories of seeing the same thing when he was a boy. He feels great pride in the physical prowess of his father and grandfather physical and their hard-working, agricultural lives. However, he also realises he “has no spade to follow men like them”, recognising that his method of “digging” will be a metaphorical one by using his pen as a spade. The poet will keep his antecedents’ culture alive by preserving it and promoting it in his writing.

The poem opens with a mixture of precision and almost dangerous intent:

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests snug as a gun.

(lines 1-2)

The opening couplet is typographically separated on the page from the first three line stanza to reinforce the contrast with the writer’s activity and that of his father who is engaged in the physical activity of digging, something that is observed by the poet but not shared. The observation takes the poet back “twenty years” to a time when his father was doing exactly the same thing. This establishes a sense of continuity, a central theme of the poem. The repetition of the word “digging” (lines 5, 9 & 24), which is also the title of the poem, clinches this. The activity of digging is observed with precision because it is a precise act in itself. The parts of the spade are carefully included; the “lug”, “shaft” and “edge” are as much part of his father’s and grandfather’s oral and working tradition, as they now become part of his written vocation. There is a careful contrast drawn between a “coarse boot” (line 10) and the fact that it “nestled” on the lug of the spade. The business of digging peat requires brute strength suggested in the strongly alliterated “buried the bright edge deep” (line 12) is skilled and this is reflected in the precision of “Nicking and slicing neatly” (line 22). The strength required to dig peat is not forgotten, though, and the enjambment of lines reflects the continuous, arduous process of digging: “heaving sods / Over his shoulder…” (lines 22-3).

There is real pride in the statements made in lines 15-16:

“By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.”

The tradition of working hard is focused on in the description of the poet’s grandfather who hardly stopped working except when he “straightened up” (line 20) to drink the milk his grandson took him in a bottle “Corked sloppily with paper.” (line 20).

Heaney has remarked that he sees the act of writing poems as sometimes analogous to embarking upon an archaeological dig. The cultural memory evoked in the poem is simultaneously personal and collective in that there are many people who may well have grown up in an agrarian environment but who, as a result of the 1944 Education Act, progressed to an education they would not otherwise have had. This demographic shift resulted in a new generation of people who earned their living in radically different ways from those of their parents. In this poem, Heaney communicates a sensitive awareness to the need to commemorate and celebrate a way of life that is of intrinsic, dignified value, even if he cannot physically follow in the footsteps of previous generations.

Heaney has said that poetry is “restoration of the culture to itself” and has referred to poems as “elements of continuity, with the aura and authenticity of archaeological finds, where the buried shard has am importance that is not diminished by the importance of the buried city; poetry as a dig, a dig for finds that end up being plants”. (Preoccupations p.41) Line 27 encapsulates the experiences of what it is to be ab artist in relation to past tradition: “…living roots awaken in my head”. Although many years have passed, the poet feels that his heritage is very much part of his poetic present and he will ensure that it will be remembered in posterity by enshrining its memory in his writing

He also draws attention to the poem’s significance in his own artistic development:

“‘Digging’, in fact, was the name of the first poem I wrote where I thought my feelings had got into words, or to put it more accurately, where I thought my feel had got into words. Its rhythms and noises still please me.”

(Preoccupations p.41)

We are very quickly aware that the pen and the spade are emblematic of two distinct ways of life, one academic and artistic, and the other manual and agricultural. Heaney says:

“The pen/spade analogy was the simple heart of the matter”

(Preoccupations p.42)

The poem opens and concludes with the image of a pen, first as weapon and then as instrument of cultural excavation. Paradoxically, by breaking with his father’s and grandfather’s way of making a living he is also continuing it by preserving it in the cultural memory. We are part of the reading community that is able to connect or reconnect with the rural past through Heaney’s poem. At the heart of the poem, of course, is the poet’s conscious decision to “dig” with the pen rather than the spade. Heaney also wrote:

I now believe that the ‘Digging’ poem had for me the force of an initiation

(Preoccupations p.42)

He went on to remark in a self deprecating way:

“I don’t want to overload ‘Digging’ with too much significance. It is a big coarse-grained navvy of a poem”

(Preoccupations p.43)

Despite the fact that he does capture the rough and ready aspect of the hard graft of digging, one of the striking aspects of the poem is Heaney’s precision with, and energising of, language. Unsurprisingly, he has written, “poetry involves a conscious savouring of words” (Preoccupations p.46). The sheer noise generated by his poetic diction is enough, on its own, to make this poem memorable. From the “clean rasping sound” (line 3) of his father’s spade in “gravelly ground” (line 4) to the “squelch and slap / of soggy peat” we hear a relishing of words for their power to evoke. We are struck by the energy of both alliteration and onomatopoeia in these examples.

Acutely aware of his rural “living roots” and his farming lineage, he decided to keep tradition alive, not by working the land but by investing his writing with its significances. He is, in a sense unearthing the past with his poem. Archaeological images appear repeatedly in subsequent collections, most notably in the magisterial collections, North and Wintering Out. Here is Heaney laying down his cultural coordinates, the latitude and longitude or the warp and weft of his poetic cloth.

As we read the poem progresses it first regresses then returns to its own occasion of writing. Heaney begins with himself, and then moves a description of his father, grandfather and finally of himself as he decides to “dig” with his pen.

This poem is pivotal in Heaney’s writing career because it made him feel that he had made “more than an arrangement of words”. It is of central importance in his work should not be underestimated, despite the fact that it appeared in his first collection over forty years ago. It was this poem that he recited (no book was necessary) to conclude his first public reading which was in Cheltenham Town Hall after winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995.

MID-TERM BREAK

The subject of this poem is the death of Seamus Heaney’s younger brother, Christopher who was killed by a car at the age of four. It is a tremendously poignant poem and its emotional power derives in large measure form the fact that Heaney is very muted and understated with respect to his own emotional response. He chooses to focus more upon the reaction of his parents in order to convey the shocking impact of the death of their little boy. Usually, we must careful not to assume the “I” in a poem is, in fact, the poet. In this case, though, we may be sure that Mid-Term Break is purely and intensely autobiographical.

This beautiful lyric poem is certainly enormously moving. It presents an elder brother having to deal with a terrible trauma. As is frequently the case with Heaney, there is an arresting amalgam of manliness and tenderness in the writing that lends it both warmth and astringency at the same time. This poem is powerfully moving because of its emotional restraint and control of tone. Heaney concentrates on observed details and it is the accumulation of these details that helps to make the poem so memorable.

An elegiac tone is established at the beginning of the poem. An elegy is a poem written to commemorate a dead person who is traditionally resurrected in a benign landscape. Here, though, the little boy is recalled with clarity and realism; Heaney finishes with the rueful and terrible equation “A four foot box, a foot for every year”, which starkly conveys the shocking loss of a young child.

The poem opens with a line that might easily describe any child but the second line introduces a darkly foreboding atmosphere:

“I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.”

The word “knell” is appropriate in the context of a poem about death because it is the sound of a funeral bell. We do not normally associate school bells with death but this day was to prove horrifically different for the poet. The rhythm and alliteration also reinforce the mournful tone. The ‘c’ an ‘l’ sounda, as well as the internal rhyme of “bells” and “knelling” help to suggest both the idea of finality and of time seeming to slow down. The poet is driven home by his neighbours and not his parents, another unusual event preparing the reader for the idea that something is terribly wrong. The fact that Heaney remembers the precise time, “two o’clock” is convincing as we all tend to remember precise timings when recalling traumatic, like changing events.

Stanza two concentrates on the poet’s father’s emotional response who is “crying”. Heaney tells us that his father “had always taken funerals in his stride” but this death is unnatural as well as personal. The be bereft of a little child is unbearable for the normally rock solid father who would, we assume, be the sort of man to offer words of comfort to others just as “Big Jim Evans” offers his to Heaney’s family in “saying it was a hard blow.” (line 6) There is a terrible double meaning in the phrase “hard blow” because Jim Evans, by referring to the emotional impact of Christopher’s death, also unwittingly uses language that recalls the impact of the car that killed him.

The third stanza presents us with another contrast, the baby’s innocent joy at seeing his elder brother. Remembering the title of the poem, we might be tempted to hope, along with the Heaney family that this event is some terrible nightmare that might be woken up from. The baby’s normal behaviour, though, only accentuates the reality of the situation. From a technical point of view, Heaney’s skilful use of the iambic pentameter helps to emphasise the family drama that is played out in the poem. The baby’s innocent obliviousness to the tragic circumstance of his elder brother’s return from school is captured in, “The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram.” The bouncy emphatic rhythm is in direct contrast to the opening stanza’s measured pace. The unusual aspect of the situation is developed further in lines 8-11 as the young Heaney is “embarrassed” by the proffering of sympathy from “old men”. Their awkwardness is economically conveyed through their euphemistic use of language in telling him that “there were sorry” for his “trouble” (line10). The sibilant alliteration in “Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest” (line 11) captures the hushed, muted atmosphere in the house.

Heaney goes on to concentrate upon his mother’s reaction to her little boys’ death who says nothing but holds his hand in her own as she “coughed out angry tearless sighs” (line 13). The implication here is that she has cried so much that there is nothing more to cry but incensed by the driver’s failure to avoid her son. Line 14 begins with another precise time reference and the reality of the family having to receive “the corpse”. This is the first time that we know that the “trouble” is connected with.

The sixth stanza recounts the poet’s visit to his brother’s room. Heaney conveys the feeling of being unable to name the reality of the situation:

“Next morning I went up into the room.”

(line 16)

He does not go on to say that this is where his little brother is lying dead. Instead the surrounding details emphasise the atmosphere of quiet as the boys are reunited after “six weeks”. The snowdrops and candles are symbolic of life but they are also ritualistically funereal. The word “soothed” may be applicable to both the idea that the flowers and candles are placed as a comfort to the dead boy but they are also for the solace of the grieving family. Unable to articulate the reality of his brother’s death, the poet chooses to present his earlier self, noticing that he was “Paler” (line 18). Another flower image draws attention to the apparently insignificant injury that had such a devastating effect, as well as the fragility of life with which the poppy is traditionally associated:

“Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,
He lay in the four foot box as in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.
A four foot box, a foot for every year.”

The description here becomes almost unbearably powerful because of the restraint Heaney exercises. The young boy could easily be asleep but, tragically, it is only as if he were asleep. He will never wake up again. The word “cot”, along with the earlier use of “pram” in stanza three emphasises the unnatural eruption of death into the life of a family with very young children. It also helps to highlight the horror faced by any parent who is predeceased by a child. The final couplet is consistent in tone with the remainder of the poem. Heaney chooses to add a single line stanza to complete the poem that has seven three line stanzas preceding it. The effect of this is to present a terrible equation on its own, something that stands out baldly and inescapably. Just as there are “No gaudy scars” visible on the poor child’s body, so too there is no lurid concentration upon injury or any self-indulgent displays of grief. The final line is, in a sense, “knocked clear” of the rest of the poem through Heaney’s decision to separate it. There is a heartbreaking logic in the statement that reminds us both of the small stature of the child and the brevity of his young life.

As a lyric poem commemorating a terrible event, it is difficult to imagine anything to surpass it for control, truthfulness and austere reverential beauty.

FOLLOWER

The central idea in the poem is the way the relationship between parents and children shifts through time, and their cyclical nature. Heaney moves from the perspective of a young, admiring son to an exasperated one. The child literally followed in his father’s footsteps as he ploughed or worked around the farm but he also follows him in a generational way. Finally, he is ruefully aware of his father’s dependence upon him, realising that his responsibility “will not go away” (line 24).

The opening stanza presents the poet’s father as a very strong farmer whose physical strength is prodigious. Heaney presents his younger self’s admiration for his father. The description of his “shoulders globed like a full sail strung” creates a strong visual image of physical effort, the assonantal rhyme of the ‘o’ sounds helps to reinforce this phonically. Also, there is a mythic suggestion here, as if the poet’s father could be Atlas holding the whole of the earth. The muscular tension and effort required for ploughing is finely conveyed through the likening in a simile of his father’s shirted back to a “full sail”; the rhyming of “strung” and “tongue” accentuates this through sound. The poet’s father’s control and mastery is also emphasised in line four:

“The horses strained at his clicking tongue”

This shows that the man is able to control tonnes of horseflesh with just a click of the tongue. There is, though, enormous strength required, too. What Heaney emphasises here, though, is the importance of technique combined with brute strength. Ploughing is a very precise art.

The second stanza opens with a short sentence that sums up the ploughman in just two words; he is “An expert.” Like all skilled exponents of a particular art, the poet’s father knows hi equipment intimately. Heaney describes carefully the precise details of the plough’s parts; everything is done properly. We are able to hear the clank of metal in the alliterated t’s in the words “set”, “fit”, “bright” and “steel-pointed”. The expertise claimed for the father by the admiring son is proven in the actual execution of the work in hand. Satisfyingly, “The sod rolled over without breaking.” This is akin to peeling an apple all in one go but it is a great deal more difficult. The fourth line of the stanza is linked by both sense and enjambment to the third stanza in a brilliant poetic touch:

“At the headrig, with a single pluck
of reins, the sweating team turned round
and back into the land.”

(lines 8-10)

The headrig is at the extreme end of the furrow at eh edge of a field where the ploughman must turn (rather like a hairpin bend on a road) and return to start a new furrow. The turn is imitated by the verse being enjambed. The Latin word for turn is “versus” and it is clear that Heaney is deliberately employing this idea as the uses the word “turned”. His father’s consummate skill and control is again emphasised; all he needs to do is give “a single / pluck of reins” to make the horses turn. Of course, the “sweating team” comprises his father and his team of horses. The cooperation between and beast is presented here and it is intimately connected with the land. The remainder of the stanza concentrated on the precision of the poet’s father’s work. Terms normally associated with mathematics and cartography are employed:

"His eye
Narrowed and angled at the ground,
Mapping the furrow exactly

(lines 10-12)

The words “angled”, “mapped” and “exactly” tell us that the business of ploughing is very skilled and that being good at it requires a great deal of know how; there is a good deal more to it than meets the eye.

The first three stanzas concentrate on the poet’s father but the last three focus upon his own position as a child. Stanza four emphasises the child’s clumsiness in comparison with his skilled father, he “stumbled in his hobnailed wake”. The alliterated b’s with their plosive sound emphasise the physicality of the situation, while “wake” ties in with “sail” in stanza one – the boy is like a small boat in the wake of a big ship. The words “stumbled” and “fell” also prepare us for the idea of an old man becoming like the dependent child. There is a very effective rhythmical device in “dipping and rising to his plod”. Here, Heaney describes riding on his father’s back as he ploughed. This again emphasises the enormous strength of the father but also captures the up and down movement of his progress along the field through the use of vowel amplitude i.e. the short ‘i’ in ‘dipping’ and the long ‘i’ in ‘rising’.

Like all little boys, the poet wanted to emulate his father. The fact that he observed him minutely is revealed as he has clearly noticed that in order to achieve a good line he had to “close one eye”, and to keep control of the plough he had to “stiffen” an arm. The size of his father is emphasised again and his “broad shadow” is something that the child will be under until he is an independent adult.

The concluding stanza both develops the way in which the poet as boy felt as if he was a “nuisance, tripping, falling, / Yapping always.” (lines 21-2) and also presents us with another “turn” or volte face as the relationship between father and son shifts in time. This is signalled by the word “But” and the shift in tense of the verbs from past to present. This poem is an affectionate portrait of a strong man but it is also honest about the way we can all feel impatient with our parents at times.

AT A POTATO DIGGING

This is a poem concerned with Irish history. Looming over the scene depicted is the spectre of the potato famine that afflicted Ireland from 1845-49. The potato crop, staple for the Irish, failed, and with cataclysmic results. About half the population of three million died, while a million people emigrated – many to America.

The first section of the poem is written in alternately rhymed quatrains that describe a rural scene of potato digging that is clearly in progress much later than a similar scene around the time of the famine. Heaney describes a “mechanical digger” that “wrecks the drill”. Already we ain the machine age and there is a sense that it is destructive. Humans are presented as insects who “swarm in behind”, having to “stoop to fill / Wicker creels”. People seem obeisant to the mechanical digger and their baskets are the traditional containers for the crop, linking them with the potato diggers of the past. An ominous atmosphere is established - inhospitable weather makes “Fingers go dead in the cold”.

Having likened the potato gatherers to insects, Heaney goes on in stanza two to say they are “Like crows attacking crow-black fields”. This bleak image conjures the idea of carrion feeders as well as suggesting something of an omen. There is also nothing exceedingly organised about the operation as the people are in a “higgledy line”. This idea is emphasised through Heaney’s choice of the military word “ranks” premodified by the adjective “ragged”. The work is back breaking and it is clear that it is unremitting because the workers may only “stand / Tall for a moment but soon stumble back / to fish a new load from the crumbled surf” (lines 8-10). Their subservience to machine, soil and crop is made clear through further details such as “Heads bow, trunks bend, hands fumble…” (line 11). Their activity is described as “Processional stooping” (line 12) which conveys their numbers but also the idea that they are in a procession. This has both a religious connotation and one that is purely mortal. The resonance of the famine past gives us a sense that there is a queue for death being formed. The fact that this is presented as happening “mindlessly as autumn” is both potentially pejorative and indicative of the idea that there is an unquestioning continuance of this activity. The season of autumn is obviously that of harvest but is also the time of year when trees drop their leaves. So, there is a complexity of ideas being communicated here, particularly when one remembers the historical background relating to the potato and its crucial significance to Irish life. The crop being gathered in the poem’s present is garnered with the spectre of the past blight behind it. Heaney concludes the first part of the poem with overt references to the potato famine. The religiose quality that was hinted at previously is now explicit in “homage”, “famine god”, “humbled” and “seasonal altar”. The ground becomes the locus of worship each year as those harvesting are only too aware that such largesse in nature cannot be taken for granted. There is a primitive, pagan dimension to the description that aligns the potato diggers with cultures more ancient than the Christian.

Part II of the poem concentrated specifically on the potato itself rather than those who harvest it. They seem to be “petrified hearts of drills” (line 22). In this fine image, the potatoes are presented as having turned to stone, having been described previously as “inflated pebbles”. The common use of the word “petrified” is associated with fear. We are reminded of the trepidation with which each harvest is approached. Heaney goes on to say that these potatoes are “Split / by the spade” communicating both a very straightforward process but also suggesting that those digging in the time of the potato blight would have their own hearts metaphorically split by the act of cutting into a rotten crop. These, though “show white as cream”. Also, there is no rot in them, they are “knots” with a “solid feel”. There is a complicated image at the close of Part 2 that is redolent both of gratitude and horror. The potatoes are “piled in pits” and are described as “live skulls” which reminds us of victims of atrocity as well as conveying the arresting visual metaphor that convinces us that a potato can look like a skull. The fact that they are “blind-eyed” suggests that they are utterly unaware of the way in which they have, in the past, been intimately involved in a pivotal event in Irish history. The “live skulls image” prepares for its repetition in Part III that modulates from a metaphorical description of a potato to a shocking depiction of what human beings literally become as they are reduced to skeletal beings by hunger. From a stanzaic point of view, Part II closes with a sestet rather than a quatrain. This lends weight to the relief and importance associated with the success of the potato crop, something that is to be celebrated as a “clean birth”.

Part III is a much more direct and graphic contemplation upon the reality and impact of the Irish potato famine. Heaney opens with the image of starving people as “Live skulls, blind-eyed, balanced on / wild higgledy skeletons…” (lines 31-2). We are transported back in time to the mid nineteenth century where people could be “wild” with hunger. The word “higgledy” reminds us of the “higgledy line” of diggers described in Part I. This links the centuries and shows that the activity is the same and that, as humans, we are in thrall to the vicissitudes and unpredictability of nature. In our modern world we are all to familiar with the effects of famine around the world caused by crop failure. It is sobering to learn that so many people died so close to our own country. Shockingly, people were so hungry that they would eat rotten potatoes, and these poisoned them.

There is a macabre transformation described in stanza two of Part III. We left Part II with a description of a permanently sound potato crop but this one only seemed to be “sound as stone” (recalling the “inflated pebbles” in Part II). The solid “petrified” of Part II becomes the “putrefied” of this one. The “clay pit” suggests a place of human burial as well as the trench where potatoes rot. The line, “Millions rotted along with it” refers, on the surface, to potatoes but it also signals to us that the effect of this was to result in the death of mind boggling numbers of people, so dependant were they upon their staple crop.

The third stanza of Part III is uncompromising in it depiction of the effects of starvation on a human body: “Mouths tightened in, eyes died hard”. The image of “a plucked bird” suggests nakedness and death. The bird imagery is extended at the end of a stanza as Heaney presents “beaks of famine” that “snipped at guts”. Here we are given the horrific vision of people as carrion meat for vultures. Although this is metaphorical, it is nonetheless extremely powerful in evoking the pain of starvation. The people’s dwelling, “wicker huts” are places of privation, wheras the “wicker creels” in Part I are containers of plenty.

The land of Ireland itself is, we are reminded, the object of resentment for those who endured the terrible suffering of the Great Hunger. The cultural collective of “A people hungering from birth” takes on a political dimension as well as purely descriptive one. The degradation of having to grub “like plants” makes the people seem worth no more than weeds so it is unsurprising that they should feel that their land is “the bitch earth”. The verb “grafted” is normally used in gardening circles to describe a process that results in the enhancement of life or the production of a new, vigorous strain of plant. Here, though, the famine only results in a grafting to “sorrow”. The dismal “Hope rotted like a marrow” is only trumped by the description of the closing stanza of this part of the poem. The lines are littered with images of decay, rot and stench: “Stinking”, “fouled” “pus”, “filthy” and “running sore” remind us that although the famine is over, it lives on in the memory of the people. In writing the poem, of course, Heaney is keeping such memory alive. There was a great deal of resentment during and following the potato famine. While Irish people starved to death, some of the absentee landlords continued to bleed the country of its resources. While not all of them neglected their workers, there were many scandalous examples of entirely callous unconcern. It is shocking but true to record here that ships laden with food sailed from Ireland while its people starved. It was the English who were largely responsible. It is noticeable that as Heaney’s subject matter and imagery become more stark and astringent, his quatrains become more compact and shrunken, to become more relaxed and capacious again in Part IV.

Part IV modulates from an atmosphere of privation to one of plenty as we return to the diggers we met in Part I, or at least another group who are not deprived of food.. Although the workers in the field are “Dead-beat” they are not dying, they are simply exhausted form their work. There is a “gay flotilla of gulls” that gives the impression of a group of little boats around a great ocean-going vessel. This is a far cry form the ominous crows, plucked bird and the vulture-like spectre that we meet earlier in the poem. Although “The rhythm deadens” inevitably links in the reader’s mind to the death we have already been confronted with earlier in the poem, there is now a new mood of optimism. The workers eat “Brown bread” and drink “tea in bright canfuls”. Rather than simply being servants of the earth, they are “served for lunch”. In their tiredness they are able to “take their fill” in the way that their ancestors could not. Their labour will be rewarded with the satisfaction of garnering a sound potato crop, while their antecedents faced the despair of having worked until they too were “Dead-beat” but with only the spectre of death looming before them instead of the prospect of being served lunch as recompense for their labour. The “timeless fasts” are broken here but in the past they were eternal. The poem concludes with another complex set of ideas. As the workers stretch out in their rest, they are described lying on “faithless ground”. This reminds us of the fact that nature can set its face flint-like against humanity, we cannot predict how it will behave. Although the ground is faithless, a pagan image of an offering to the “bitch earth” of Part III is striking as the workers “spill / Libations of cold tea, scatter crusts.” As well as seeming like an offering to the earth (a libation is a drink offering to a god), there is also the clear sense that in times of plenty we tend to be profligate. No famine victim could afford to throw away tea dregs or crusts. The words “spill” and “scatter” capture this sense of ease most effectively. This is not to condemn those doing it, of course. Heaney is drawing attention, by contrast, to the terrible consequences of the failed potato crop in Ireland.

For a marvellous account of the Irish Potato Famine, one need look no further than Cecil Woodham Smith’s The Great Hunger. Patrick Kavanagh’s poem of the same title is required reading also.