The poetry of Seamus Heaney is deceptively simple

The poetry of Seamus Heaney is deceptively simple. Examine this

comment in the light of his choices of subject, diction, and

structure. You should refer to at least two poems in your responses.

The deceptive simplicity of the poet can be helped to be understood

through P A M Dirac, who suggests that poetry tries to tell people in

a way that is understood by no one, something everybody already knew.

If you can comprehend this, it is easier to see how the poetry of

Heaney can be called deceptively simple, the surface which appears to

be the reminiscing of his youth, is misleading, in actuality it is

hinting at something far more complex and explaining lessons of life

that he learnt, that the reader may never grasps.

One of the common themes which appear to run through the poems studied

is that of childhood experience. They each explore the authors’

memories in a different way, showing how his past has made him into

the person he is now. All his memories are significant beyond their

surface meaning. For example the poems are all set in nature with the

exception of ‘Mid-Term Break’ and beyond the details of his formative

years as a farmer’s son, are issues which are of much more importance,

such as death. Certain words also allude to at other things beside

that which the poem simple is, such as the metaphor “as snug as a

gun”. This is a reference to the IRA in Ireland. Other words and

phrases such as “Helicon” and “our palms as sticky as Bluebeards” are

also allusion to the immediate world. They for instance show his

educated background in Classical Mythology.

As background information, Seamus Heaney was what we may call the

odd-one-out, he lacked the physical skill and the ability to become a

farmer ...

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...important as memory is activated through vivid taste and

intense smells. It is through the senses that the reader is

stimulated. Descriptions of the senses in ‘Digging’ include “a lean

rasping sound” for hearing, “cool hardness” for touch, “the cold smell

of potato mould” and in ‘Blackberry Picking’ the sight of “a glossy

purple clot”. In reality it is through our senses that the past comes

to life. To capture this within a poem, with writing, takes a skilled

poet and a practiced technique. The language of the poem, every single

word is important; it may appear simple but if you were to write a

poem without any thought there would in truth be no real meaning to

the poem. It is through the expertise of Seamus Heaney that the nature

of his poems comes to light and we understand that which we already

knew and the meaning of a deceptively simple becomes clear.