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Poems and their effects
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Discuss some of the ways in which Seamus Heaney makes use of the past
in his poetry
Seamus Heaney was born on 13th April 1939 on a farm called Mossbawn in
Northern Ireland. He was the eldest of nine children, and was brought
up as a Roman Catholic, which later, proved to be a popular topic in
his poetry. Heaney’s childhood was full of deaths from relatives and
friends which give him a certain amount of understanding about death
and corpses, a poem that shows this is ‘The Tollund Man’. In his
poetry, Seamus Heaney usually starts in the past tense, imagining that
he is still in his childhood, and then suddenly, towards the end of
the poem, turns to the present tense, and reflects how his childhood
memories have affected him as an adult.
‘Digging’ is a perfect example of Heaney returning to his origins.
Heaney evokes the rural landscape where he was raised and shows the
care and skill of how his Father and ancestors farmed the land ‘My
father, digging’. In the poem there are many monosyllabic words such
as ‘bog’, ‘sods’ and ‘curt cuts’, which is also alliteration and
assonance. The colloquial term, ‘By God, the old man could handle a
spade’ shows Seamus Heaney’s pride of his Grandfather. “Irishmen are
justifiably well known for digging, but Heaney shows the skill and
dignity in their labour”. By giving examples of his Father digging
for food ‘potato drills’ and his Grandfather digging for fuel ‘cut
more turf’ indicates how it is traditional in his family to dig as a
profession, and how Heaney broke that tradition. ‘The squat pen
rests. I’ll dig with it’, shows metaphorically that Heaney will ‘dig’
for words in his poetry, rather than for turf or potatoes.
Onomatopoeia is used often throughout the poem...
... middle of paper ...
...but
on the inside he would understand why they had to do it.
On the whole, Seamus Heaney uses the past and his childhood in many of
his poems to be able to see them in a different light and be able to
understand different memories with maturity. Heaney uses a variety of
different ways to include past in his poems, like the bog people, the
conflicts in Northern Ireland and in his childhood, to attempt to
understand present day sectarian conflict and to explore human
cruelty.
References:
* A Student’s Guide to Seamus Heaney by Neil Corcoran
* Seamus Heaney: The Making of the Poet by Michael Parker
* www.teachit.co.uk
* www.galegroup.com/free_resources/poets/bio/heaney_s.htm-69k
* www.universalteacher,org.uk/anthology/seamusheaney.htm#naturalist
* www.usna.edu/EnglishDept/ilu/heaney.htm
* http://ctct.essoetment.com/whoisseamuse-rgkk.htm
and he savored reading. His father at one time aspired to be a poet. His
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