West-Wind-Blows-Heaney

This program discusses the poetry of Seamus Heaney, focusing on the themes and authenticity of his work. Heaney's poems are grounded in his personal experiences and real places, like Mossborne and Aunt Mary. While his themes are universal, they stem from his unique personal experiences. The past is a major theme in Heaney's poetry, both personal and historic. Heaney has a talent for vividly recreating the past with authenticity, never glamorizing it. The Harvest Bow symbolizes a portal to the past for Heaney. Overall, Heaney's poetry is visually rich and deeply rooted in his own life. This program is sponsored by Cunnamara Holiday Lettings, your one-stop shop for all your holiday home rental needs, 095 22669. Hello again and welcome to the educational series for Leaving Certificate students Higher Level English. Today, Dennis Craven from the Institute of Education, Leeson Street, Dublin, will lecture on the poetry of Séamus Heaney. This lecture was recorded before the untimely death of Séamus Heaney. Suibhnas siaradh go anam bílis. And now, over to Dennis Craven. In this talk, I'll say a few things about the poetry of Séamus Heaney, and I hope in the course of the talk to cover the main aspects of Heaney. Hopefully, we'll cover some aspects that may very well appear on the Leaving Cert paper if Heaney's poetry should come up. I won't burden you with the biographical note on Heaney. You know when he was born and about winning the Nobel Prize in 1995 and all that. Don't think you get much credit in the Leaving Cert for biographical notes. What they want you to write about is not so much the life as the actual poetry. Talking about the poetry in your course, I think there's only one poet where the life is very important, and that is Sylvia Plath. And you know the answer to that question yourself because Sylvia Plath writes about her life. All her poems are about her life. And pardon this digression away now from Heaney for the moment. In Plath, you cannot separate the life from the poems. But in the case of Heaney, you certainly can. What are the main aspects of Heaney's poetry? The first thing I want to say about Heaney's poetry is that nearly all his poems are grounded in his own personal experience. So, Heaney's poems are grounded in real places and in his own experience. Just think of that now for a moment. Think of the poem Sunlight, Mossborne. The poem is rooted there in Mossborne, and the centre of the poem is his Aunt Mary, real person in his young life. The forge. Look at the harvest bow that his father wove. The poem is set in Mossborne, and the harvest bow eventually becomes a doorway or a portal to lead the grown man Heaney back to the Mossborne of his childhood. So that's the important thing to say about Heaney. What about the poem A Constable Calls? Look, you can take any poem by Heaney on your prescribed list and they're all grounded in real places. As well as that, most of his poems are grounded in his own unique personal experience. They spring from his own personal experience, like his Aunt Mary, the forge, Constable Calls, Harvest Bow, or any other poem by Heaney on your course that you care to mention. And this is the important part of it. Heaney seems to find universal themes in his own personal experiences. The experiences are personal and unique to Heaney, but the themes are universal. He finds universal themes in his own individual experience, and that's very, very important. So now we'll talk about the themes, for example. Well, the biggest theme in Heaney's poetry is the past, the past, the past, or if you like, memory. You look at that list of poems in your prescribed list and you will not be able to come up, I think, with any poem that does not in one way or another focus on the past or impinge on the past in some way. It's the great theme in Heaney's poetry. Don't go into a leaving certificate exam without being very, very familiar with the theme of the past in Heaney's poetry, but we'll return to that. So we look at poems now. So Heaney's poems are, they're both personal and historic and universal. Father-son relationship is a universal theme. You find that in The Harvest Bow, you find it in a poem called A Call. Love is a theme, certainly in the poem Moss-Borne Sunlight, and in The Harvest Bow, and in A Call. The theme of childhood is a universal experience that we all have experienced, and childhood fear, the constable calls. Nature, if you want, is pretty much a universal theme. You find that in that poem Postscript. Hope is a universal theme in The Tolerant Man, where he links the tolerant man with the victims of Northern Ireland's sectarian violence, and he hopes for a springtime of renewal in Northern Ireland, just as the sacrifice of tolerant man was supposed to bring renewal and springtime to the ancient pagan world. Violence is a big theme in The Tolerant Man, violence, which is pretty much a universal theme, unfortunately. The Harvest Bow, if you want to stretch The Harvest Bow a bit, artistic creation, and indeed you could talk about The Forge as a metaphor for the act of artistic creation, but the thing I want to say about all those themes that I have just mentioned, they're all universal themes, and where do they spring from? Universal though they be, they spring from the individual, unique, personal experience of Heaney. His themes are both personal and universal. The past. The big theme in Heaney is the past. Heaney is forever revisiting the past and recreating it. Number one, he revisits his own personal past, and he recreates it with a vividness. I said in a previous talk that Philip Larkin was a most visual poet, equally visual almost as Heaney. Heaney has a wonderful eye and memory for detail, and an extraordinary ability to recreate with absolute vividness the world and the experiences and the feelings of his own past. So there are two paths in Heaney's poetry, that his personal past, I'll name some poems, Moss-Borne Sunlight, The Harvest Bow, The Forge, and The Constable Calls, there are four of them. If you want you could put in Underground or one of the other poems, make five if you want to. But then there is what we call the historic past. You have the personal past, and now you have the historic past, and you see the historic past in two poems, Bogland and Tallon Man. So if you are dealing with Seamus Heaney's fascination with the past, you'll focus not only on his personal past, but also on the historic past. And now let me give a bit of advice here. If, for example, you are asked in an examination to write about Seamus Heaney bringing the past vividly to life, about Seamus Heaney's poetry being full of visual images, and his extraordinary ability to recreate the past vividly, or to bring the past vividly to life, my advice to you is, in that case, keep away from Tallon Man, keep away from Bogland, and focus solely on the personal past, because there's more material there, and it's easier to get to the point. But if you're asked to write a general essay about the past, then you'll deal both with the personal past and the historic past. The next thing I want to say about Heaney is, his poetry has a wonderful visual quality. He's able to recreate persons and places from the past with an almost photographic vividness. I'll be giving you several examples of that as we look through the particular poems. That's the historic past, the personal past. Here's a major feature in Heaney's poetry. When you think of Heaney's recreations of the past, think of authenticity. Seamus Heaney never glamorises the past. No matter how much he loves the past, he never glamorises the past. He recreates the past as it was, honestly and truly as it was. So in his recreations of the past, there is a wonderful vividness of picture, but more importantly, there's a wonderful authenticity. He never romanticises or glamorises the past, either places of the past or persons of the past. For example, in the poem Sunlight Must Burn, this poem about his Aunt Mary, there's a marvellous description of his Aunt Mary as she goes about her ordinary work. So her hand scuffled over the bakeboard, the reddening stove sent its plaque of heat against her where she stood, in a flowery apron by the window. Now she dusts the board with the goose's wing, now sits broad-lapped with whitened nails and measling shins. Much as he loves his Aunt Mary, he will not glamorise her or romanticise her. He paints her in all her unglamorous ordinance. For example, she has whitened nails, and she has those red blotches on her knees from sitting too near the fire. She has whitened nails and measling shins, and when she sits down, she has a broad-lapped sitting posture. That's a good example for you to use to show that Seamus Heaney, in his recreations of the past, never glamorises or romanticises the past. He's true to the past. He describes the past as it was, whether it's place or person. Look at another example of where Seamus Heaney refuses to glamorise the past. The poem is The Harvest Bow, and this is a harvest bow woven by Seamus Heaney's father and given to Seamus Heaney as a love token from father to son. But much as Seamus Heaney loves his father, he will not glamorise him. He paints his father as he was. He was a loving father, but he was a man involved in the cruel sport of cock-fighting in Northern Ireland, the cruel and illegal sport of cock-fighting. That is Seamus Heaney. Much though he loves his father, he will not glamorise either place or person from the past. That man's hands aged round ash plants, and they lacked the spurs on a lifetime of game cocks. But further on, in that marvellous stanza on this poem, my own favourite lines in all Heaney, the harvest bow opens up as it were, and it becomes for Seamus Heaney a portal, to use that computer word, or a doorway into the past. And as Seamus Heaney, the grown man, watches this harvest bow hanging on his deal dresser in Dublin, he becomes a child again. I read. And if I spy into its golden loops, I see us walk between the railway slopes, into an evening of long grass and midges, blue smoke straight up, old beds and ploughs in hedges, an auction notice on an outhouse wall, you with the harvest bow in your lapel, me with the fishing-rod, already homesick for the big lift of these evenings. Well, that's the brilliant moment of father-son togetherness, vividly recreated. But he will not glamorise the place. Mossborne is reproduced authentically as it was. There are old beds and ploughs in hedges, not very environmentally caring. It's a clear, honest, authentic depiction of Mossborne, old beds and ploughs in hedges, and a notice there advertising a sale of land or something. You'll remember also in that poem, the forge of Seamus Heaney's childhood, that dark, mysterious place. Again, he will not glamorise either the forge or the blacksmith. The forge may be a metaphor for the place of artistic creation, and the blacksmith may be a metaphor for the poet, and we may look at that in a moment. But first of all, the forge is a real, authentic forge from Heaney's childhood. And leaving aside the possibility of the poem being a metaphor for anything, the poem is first of all and above all an authentic forge, vividly described and described honestly and authentically. All I know is a door into the dark, outside old axles and iron hoops rusting, inside the hammered anvil's short-pitched ring. And look at the end of the poem, how authentically he will depict and paint the blacksmith of his childhood. Sometimes leather apron, hairs in his nose, he leans out on the jam, recalls the clatter of hoofs, where traffic is flashing in rows, then grunts and goes in with the slam and the flick, to beat real iron out, to work the bellows. I think I've given you enough examples of where Seamus Heaney authentically describes the past, and in the course of this talk I'll be referring again and again to the past, because that's the big theme in Heaney's poetry. And by the way, don't forget to notice that the past is a great universal theme, and it's the great theme in Heaney's poetry, coupled with love and fear and childhood and so on, but it's the great theme in Heaney's poetry. So to recap as far as I've gone now, Heaney's poetry and his themes are both personal and universal. They are grounded on his own unique individual personal experiences. You have no difficulty illustrating that from the different poems. They are both personal and universal. When Heaney deals with the past, he deals both with the historic past and his own personal past. We discussed that. When he does recreate the past, and he recreates the past with a wonderful vividness, his poems are full of a wonderful visual quality. Authenticity never ever glamorises the past, describes the past as it was. He will not glamorise the past or romanticise it. I gave you two or three good examples there, and I could have given you a lot more. And the poem is grounded in his own experience. I will say a few things about Heaney's themes. Just to repeat very briefly what I said already, universal themes grounded in his own experience, visual quality, authenticity. Now the language, his technique, the language Heaney uses is for the most part very accessible, almost conversational. And I think I know where that comes from. Heaney was profoundly influenced by Patrick Kavanagh. So Heaney's language, like Kavanagh's, is sometimes quite colloquial, quite conversational. Sometimes his language is very sensuous. And I think you should have examples of that, if you can find three or four examples of sensuous language. What do I mean by sensuous language? Language that impacts on the senses, on the touch, on the taste, on the hearing, on the sight, the smell, the olfactory sense, the smell, the gustatory sense, the taste, the visual, the aural, or the tactile. Do you remember the poem Bogland? The bogland is opening and melting underfoot. You almost feel your feet sinking into the bogland. I'll give you a couple more examples of sensuous language. What do I mean by sensuous language? To repeat, language that impacts on the senses. The peat melting and opening underfoot. You actually almost feel your feet sinking into the bog, as if the bog were inviting you in to explore our national past. The constable calls the fat black handle-bips heating in the sun. You can almost feel your hands on them. So sensuous is the language. In the poem Bogland, he talks about butter that was recovered, salty and white, the sense of taste, salty and white. And in the poem Mossborne, his Aunt Mary is standing beside the stove, and the reddening stove sent a plaque of heat against her where she stood. We feel the heat with her. And it's a marvellous one. It's a brilliant image. In the poem The Harvest Bow, he and his father is plaiting and weaving a harvest bow in wheat that does not rust but brightens as it tightens. Look at this. The wheat brightens as it tightens. You're almost inclined to move your fingers yourself to get engaged in the plaiting. The language is so sensuous, it gets you at your finger level. To give you another example of sensuous language, the forge, the anvil's sharp pitched ring. You can hear it. The hiss of water as a new shoe toughens. You know when you put the red-hot shoe into the water, you actually hear the hiss of water as the shoe toughens. You'll have no difficulty at all in commenting on the sensuous nature of Heaney's language. I'm sure there are several more examples that I could have taken there, but what I have mentioned there will suffice. His language is conversational, sometimes colloquial, but it has a wonderful sensuous quality, language that impacts on the senses. Now I'm going to look in more detail at a few particular poems, and one that I love is the poem Sunlight Must Burn, a marvellous poem where Seamus Heaney lovingly revisits a place and person that was central to his childhood, and he revisits that place. It's a love poem, it's a journey into a love time, and in that poem Seamus Heaney describes the great symbol of love in his child life, his Aunt Mary, Mary Heaney. There was a sunlit absence, The helmeted pump in the yard, Heated iron, Water honned in the slung-bucket, And the sun stood, like a griddle cooling, Against the wall of each long afternoon. So her hand scuffed over the bakeboard, The reddening stove sent its plaque of heat Against her where she stood, In a flowery apron by the window. Now she dusts the board With a goose's wing, Now sits broad-lapped With whitened nails and measling shins. Here's a space again, The scone rises to the tick of two clocks, And here is love, like a tin-smith's scoop, Sunk past its gleam in the meal-bin. A brilliant poem, A brilliant recreation of the past, A journey of love into the past, And a focus on a place and a time In the person that was central to his life. I want to comment on this poem. It's a memory poem. It's a poem about the past. It's a poem in which Heaney revisits childhood. It's a poem about love, practical domestic love, Represented by Heaney's Aunt Mary. Every household chore that she performs Is an act of ordinary, unglamorous love, Practical love. It's a nostalgic poem where Heaney, the grown man, Lovingly remembers the place of his childhood, Mossbourne, And of his Aunt Mary, who was The life and loving centre of that place. He recalls a sort of garden of Eden, An eternal summer. He recalls the yard Bathed in sunshine. Everything is absolutely still and calm In the heat of an unending day. The phrase Each long afternoon Suggests day after day after day Of uninterrupted happiness. He describes the place In authentic detail, With the pump in the yard And the water turning honey In the slung bucket. And then he moves inside, And just as the sun was the centre of life In the outside world, His Aunt Mary was the centre of life inside. She was the sun, if you want it, In the inside world. And what's she doing? She's baking bread. Inside the house, The poet's aunt is the sun, The source of light and peace And life and love. Baking the bread of life, Her hands scuffled over the bakeboard, She's stood in a flowery apron, And she's watching the scones rise To the tick of two clocks. Her nails were whitened with flour. And in the fifth stanza, Heaney's memory of the past Becomes present. He uses the present tense, And the past becomes so real to Heaney That he switches to the present tense. So vivid is the memory of the past, Now she dusts the board, Now sits broad-lapped, That switch into present tense. It's a marvellous example of Heaney's ability To make the past so vivid, Switching to the present tense. As I said, the past is so intensely remembered That it becomes present. His aunt is going calmly About her daily chores, Not tasks, really, But acts of practical, quiet love. The poet captures a moment of stillness As his aunt rests. Heaney captures what Wordsworth called a spot of time, And hears a space again. Heaney captures this spot of time From the past when he watches his aunt As she sits there broad-lapped, Watching the scone rising To the tick of two clocks. And in a moment of sheer epiphany, The poem takes off, And Heaney now realises What his aunt represents. And here is love Like a tinsmith's scoop Sunk past its gleam in the meal bin. And here, in this ordinary, unglamorous woman, Performing routine chores around the house, Making and baking bread and dusting the bakeboard, In her is love. Everything she does Is a manifestation and representation of love, Ordinary, unglamorous love. I told you that Heaney Never glamorises the past. His depictions of the past Have a wonderful authenticity and honesty. But what an image he uses! And don't forget, if you talk about images in Heaney, I know Heaney's poems are full of visual images, Full of very descriptive images, visual images. But there's a marvellous image here, a simile. And all similes are images, Because all similes pay into pictures. Like a tinsmith's scoop, Her love is like a tinsmith's scoop Sunk past its gleam in the meal bin. Well, if you get the old Tinsmith's scoop with the wooden handle, If you sink a tinsmith's scoop Way down deep into the meal bin, You won't see the shiny, gaudy part of it. You'll only see the wooden handle. And when you take it out, it'll be full. And that simile is telling us That her love wasn't gaudy, Wasn't showy, wasn't demonstrative. It was quiet and calm. But like the tinsmith's scoop, It came out full. It was full, but unglamorous, Unshowy and undemonstrative. What a recreation of the past! They could very easily ask you to describe how Heaney vividly Brings to mind, or vividly recreates the past. Authentic, powerful visual images. But what a simile he uses there! Now, I'm going to look at another poem before I go back to the technical things. And that is, I want to look at that poem, The Harvest Bough, and I'll quote a few pieces from it. Because it's another poem where Heaney makes a loving journey into the past. As you patted the harvest bough, You implicated the mellow silence in you, In wheat that does not rust, But brightens as it tightens, Twist by twist into a noble corona, A throwaway love-knot. Hands that aged round ash-plants and cane-sticks, And lapped the spurs on a lifetime of game-cocks, Hard to their gift, and worked with fine intent, Until your fingers moved somnambulant. I tell and finger it like braille, Gleaning the unsaid off the palpable, And this, I think, is a stanza you should know on the exam, Because I cannot imagine an examiner not being moved by it, if it were used in context. The Harvest Bough becomes for Heaney a doorway into the past, Into a time of love and peace and calm, Back to a moment of togetherness with his father, Walking through the fields of Mossbourne. The theme of the poem is the past, But also a father-son relationship. And if Seamus Heaney looks into the loops of the Harvest Bough, They'll be golden loops because they're plaited and woven from wheat. He's a boy again walking the fields with his father, And he creates a most loving, beautiful image of father-son togetherness. And if I spy into his golden loops, I see us walk between the railway slopes, Into an evening of long grass and midges, Blue smoke straight up, all beds and ploughs in hedges, An auction notice on an outhouse wall, You with the Harvest Bough in your lapel, Me with the fishing-rod, already homesick For the big lift of these evenings. And Seamus Heaney, the grown man, is a boy again, Nostalgically homesick for the love and calm of that time together with his father, Already homesick for the big lift of these evenings. But look at the detail, You with the Harvest Bough, Me with the fishing-rod, You with the Harvest Bough in your lapel, All beds and ploughs in hedges, An auction notice on an outhouse wall, Tremendous authenticity and a vivid recreation of the past. Seamus Heaney has recreated a beautiful moment of father-son togetherness, And he has done it by using language that is so childlike. For example, And if I spy into his golden loops, If I spy, reminiscent of I spy with my little eye, Like a child might say. And that phrase, Me with the fishing-rod, is absolutely childish in its simplicity. So Heaney has recreated from the past a beautiful moment of father-son togetherness, Without ever becoming over-sentimental or maudlin. He gets it just right. Of course, you can take the Harvest Bough to be a doorway. You can take the Harvest Bough as a metaphor for creativity. The creative father wove that Harvest Bough. He plaited it from straw, from wheat that does not rust. He brightened it and tightened it with his fingers. Because he was a sort of artist too. And he wove a Harvest Bough, and he gave it to his artistic son. The father wove from straw, and Heaney will weave from words. The Harvest Bough is an artistic link between creative father and creative son. It's a doorway into the past. I want to switch very briefly to a poem that's not nearly as loving as that. You will notice that I'm focusing a good deal on the biggest team in all Heaney, and that is the team of the past. Whose past is it? His own past. I haven't spoken yet about the historic past you find in Bogland and Tolerant Man. I'll say a few things about that poem a constable calls another vivid recreation of the past. How does Heaney vividly recreate the past? By the visual quality of his poetry, by his memory for detail. He has a wonderful memory for detail which enables him to paint the most vivid pictures of the past. That's the great quality in Heaney's poetry, the visual quality. I say that also about people like Philip Larkin. But the constable calls it a memory poem. A poem about the past, a journey to childhood. In this poem, Heaney describes with a fine memory for detail an experience from his childhood. He recreates his own state of mind when, as a child, he watched the RUC constable interrogating his father in his father's house. He describes his fear and his imaginings. But the whole experience and the whole picture is recreated with a wonderful eye for detail. I suppose because the experience was a frightening one for a child, each detail will naturally stand out vividly in his memory. That usually happens in the case of an intense experience. Notice how the poet remembers every detail. The shape of the mud splasher, the black handle grips heating in the sun, the spud of the dynamo gleaming and cocked back, the pedals hanging relieved at the boot of the law, the cap upside down on the floor. What an eye for detail, and all the accumulation of that detail paints the most vivid picture of that towering, intimidating RUC man in Heaney's kitchen, interrogating his father while his young son looked on. He even remembers the impression of the cap on the constable's slightly sweating hair, the policeman unstrapping the heavy ledger, the polished holster. In this poem, Heaney revisits an experience of fear. You will notice that none of the details he uses to paint the picture are friendly, pleasant images. The fat black handle grips heating in the sunlight are gross and crude. The dynamo cocked back is threatening like a gun. The boot of the law is an awful image, suggesting oppression and force and brutality. The indentation of the cap on the policeman's sweating hair is an ugly image. And there's the frightening image of the polished holster and the revolver butt. The image of the policeman unstrapping the heavy ledger is intimidating. Even the tone of the constable's questions is unfriendly. And then the child feels guilt and fear when he realizes that his father had failed to mention the line of turnips. He imagines the black hole in the barracks where his child's mind fears his father might be but for failing to make mention of the turnips. And as the constable leaves, a shadow bobbed in the window. Imagine that image, a shadow bobbed in the window. The shadow in the window suggests something evil and sinister. You almost get the feeling that some sort of a Dracula creature is outside. Of course, there's a political context to the poem. An RUC constable comes to the Nationalist teeny home to take the tillage census. The RUC man represents the Unionist-controlled Ulster, so naturally in the poem there's a tension between the Nationalist community and the Unionist community, the dominant community in Ulster at the time. Powerful recreation of the past with an extraordinary memory for detail. There's a poet on your course this year, Elizabeth Bishop, and she has that same ability that Heaney has, that ability to paint a picture by using a build-up of detail, and that's what Heaney does. Take any one of his poems where he's describing the past and he'll use an accumulation of detail to build up a whole picture of the past, a very vivid picture. I keep repeating to you that Heaney's main themes are the past and he recreates them with a wonderful visual quality. Where does the visual quality come from? The accumulation of detail, the wonderful memory for detail that he has. The poem Bogland is another poem about the past, but not of course about Heaney's own past, it's about what we will call the historic past. If you are dealing with that past in Heaney, you deal with his personal past and with the historic past. Tallinn man and Bogland, but if you're asked a question like that Heaney's portrait brings the past vividly to life, well then you wouldn't bother with Bogland and Tallinn man. We have no prairies to slice a big sun at evening, everywhere the eye concedes to encroaching horizon, is wooed into the cyclops eye of a tarn. Our unfenced country is bog that keeps crusting between the sights of the sun. They've taken the skeleton of the great Irish elk out of the peat, set it up in an astounding crate of air. Butter sunk under more than a hundred years, was recovered salty and white. The ground itself is kind black butter, melting and opening underfoot, missing its last definition by millions of years. They'll never dig coal here, only the waterlogged trunks of great furs, soft as pulp. Our pioneers keep striking inwards and downwards, every layer this strip seems camped on before. The bog holes might be Atlantic seepage, the wet centre is bottomless. A word on the poem. This is about Bogland and Heaney sees Bogland, our bogs here in Ireland, as a sort of museum. The bogs contain the past. A bog contains the history of our landscape. In this poem Heaney is focusing on the historic past, on how the bog preserves the past and acts as a museum. The poem of course is also about the Irish mind, the Irish psyche, a mind that's fascinated with the past. We do not have vast prairies stretching away to distant horizons as the Americans have. Our horizons close in around us. So the prairies of America, stretching away for miles and miles and miles to distant horizons, invite the Americans to look up and out. In America, the prairie lands, stretching away for miles and miles to distant horizons, entice the Americans to look up and out. Up and out and be pioneers exploring new territory. We don't have landscape like that. Everywhere you look in Ireland, your vision is impeded by hill or mountain. So unlike the Americans, we are forced to look in and down. And that's precisely what we do as a people. We are forever looking in and down, exploring ourselves. The Americans are invited by their landscape to look up and out into distant horizons. Exploring new territory. On the other hand, we, with our horizons closing in around us, tend to look inwards and downwards in two ways. We tend to be self-exploring and self-analyzing. Very common in Irish literature, self-exploring and self-analyzing. But more importantly, as a people, we are absolutely fascinated with the past. We are not pioneers. We are more archaeologists. We are far more interested in the past than we are with exploring the new. For Irish people, the past is our comfort zone. Think of all our ceremonies and all our commemorative situations and the way we harbour our political differences and so on. And the bog, our landscape, makes us the sort of people we are. People who focus inwards and downwards. Inwards in ourselves and downwards into our past. And where will we find our past? We have a natural museum. We have our own natural museum out there in the bogs. The bog contains the history of the landscape. And look at this beautiful image. Heaney says the bog land is like black butter. It's like kind black butter, melting and opening underfoot. As if the bog land is opening the door, welcoming us, inviting us in to explore and re-experience and relive our past. The bog land for Heaney is inviting us into the past. The bog land for Heaney is a museum. Look, he says, in the bog we found the skeleton of the great Irish elk. They've taken the skeleton of the great Irish elk out of peat and set it up in an astounding crate. And if you go to the Natural History Museum in Dublin, you'll see the elk set up in an astounding crate. One of the great talents Heaney has, he's able to use words to convey shape and movement. He talks about butter being recovered in the bog because the bog preserves the past. Look at this for assonance. Butter sunk under more than a hundred. You get the idea of the butter buried in the bog. And then what happened? It was recovered. You have the rising sound. Butter sunk under more than a hundred years, was recovered. The word recovered, you almost see the butter coming up if I'm not over-reading it. Still salty and white, sensuous language. So in this poem, Heaney is focusing on the bog land as our past. The poem is about bog land, our museum. We are a past people. Every layer we strip was camped on before. Every layer of the bog has been lived on before. I'll just say this, a bit of geography for those who do geography. A bog grows by a foot every thousand years. So imagine that you're eight feet down in the bog. You're 8,000 years ago. People lived 8,000 years ago. People lived down there, eight feet down. They lived and loved and played 7,000 years ago. They were seven feet down. A bog grows a foot every thousand years. Every layer of the bog you stripped on was camped on before, lived on. The word camped is brilliant. Suggests that the best of us are only passing through. We're only transitory as we go through life. That's a marvellous poem about the historic past. And our historic past has sounded the bog. The poem, The Tallon Man, is another poem about the historic past. And he's so fascinated with the past that he promised to go on a sort of pilgrimage to Arhos to see the Tallon Man. And the Tallon Man was a man who was preserved by the bog. Because the bog is a historian. And like all historians, it preserves the past and gives it back to us when we dig into it. The man has been preserved for 2,000 years. This man had been sacrificed in a pagan ritual to the earth goddess Nerthus in an ancient pagan religious ceremony. He's a man who was sacrificed in winter in the belief that out of his sexual union with Nerthus, the earth goddess, would come spring and growth and fertility. He had seen a photograph of Tallon Man in a book. And look at this for a description of what he saw in the book. Someday I will go to Arhos to see his pink brown head, the mild pods of his eyes, his pointed skin cap. Imagine that for a vivid description of a photograph that he saw. It's nearly as clear as the photograph itself. The description he gives of what he saw in the photograph, that's Heaney's visual quality. Heaney goes back 2,000 years in his imagination and he says he will stand a long time looking at Tallon Man. Fascinated. Heaney's journey is not just a journey to Arhos. He journeys into the past. And as he thinks of Tallon Man, his imagination takes over. And he almost takes on the mindset of an ancient pagan. Heaney can imagine Nerthus tightening her torque on the man, opening her fen, receiving him sexually. And the mating between Nerthus and the man is almost as real for Heaney as it was for the pagans 2,000 years ago. That's how fascinated Heaney is with the past, with the historic past. For Heaney, Tallon Man is a sort of pagan saint. His body has been preserved. So he's a sort of pagan saint. Heaney, the Catholic from modern Ulster, will pray to this pagan saint from the past. He will risk blasphemy. Blasphemy is to do something unholy. And for a Christian to pray to a pagan saint would be unholy. But Heaney will risk blasphemy and pray to this pagan saint. Because the need is so great. And what will he pray for? He will pray for Ulster. Just as Tallon Man was sacrificed 2,000 years ago in the hope of bringing a springtime of fertility and growth, Seamus Heaney will pray that the same may happen in Ulster. That all the victims of sectarian violence in Ulster will not have died in vain. But that out of their slaughter and sacrifice will come peace and harmony in Ulster. He will pray for Northern Ireland. He wants the land of Northern Ireland to become holy ground. Just as the bogs of Denmark were sacred places out of which spring came. He will pray to Tallon Man to make the broken flesh of Northern Ireland's 20th century victims of sectarian killings germinate. Germinate so that out of their deaths will come a springtime of peace and hope. In this poem, Heaney is linking the past with the present. He's using the past to make an unflattering comment on the present. He will pray to a pagan icon to help solve the hate between Christians in Northern Ireland. This poem casts a poor reflection on Christianity as lived in Northern Ireland. In fact, the pagans of 2000 years ago are more flatteringly painted. The pagans of 2000 years ago were involved in man killing. But the man killing was carried out in hope while 20th century Northern Ireland killings were done in hate. Heaney says that out there in Jutland in the old man killing parishes he will feel lost, unhappy and at home. He will be lost. He won't know where he is. He'll be looking for directions. He'll be unhappy because he's in a place of killing and he'll be at home because he has come from another place of killing. He'll feel very much at home. The whole poem is saying that Northern Ireland as it then was is trapped in a time warp. So that's the brilliant poem where Heaney uses the past, the historic past to comment on the present. He's going to pray to Tollan Man to make it possible that the victims of sectarian hate in Northern Ireland will germinate a new time of hope and peace just as Tollan Man's sacrifice that was intended to germinate a springtime of growth and fertility in Jutland. Back to technique again. I'll summarise now the main aspects of Heaney's technique. First of all, all his poems are grounded in the world of his own experience. Secondly, his poems have a wonderful, vivid visual quality, a visual painting of persons and places. Another feature of his technique is authenticity. He describes the past as it was, never ever glamorises it. You see an instance of that when he is describing his Aunt Mary with whitened nails and measling shins and indeed her broad-lapped sitting posture. Of course, Heaney's language is very, very accessible, sometimes conversational and colloquial. He can use some marvellous metaphors and similes to convey ideas. Sometimes he can use language to convey sound. And most importantly of all, sometimes his language can be very, very sensuous. By sensuous language, of course, I mean language that appeals to the senses. Be sure you have some examples of language that impacts on the senses from Heaney's poetry. The music of his poetry. Be able to comment on rhyme especially. And sometimes Heaney uses full rhyme and sometimes he uses half rhyme. I'll give you an example of a marvellous use of half rhyme. I'm thinking of the harvest bow. If you look at the ends of the lines, where you usually find end-of-line rhyme. Now look down to the third stanza if you're looking at your poetry books and you'll see a marvellous example of the music of half rhyme. And if I spy into its golden loops, I see us walk between the railway slopes into an evening of long grass and midges, blue smoke straight up, old beds and ploughs and hedges. Marvellous use of half rhyme. The great thing about half rhyme is it never looks artificial. It never looks contrived. It comes across so naturally. It is the art that conceals art and sometimes I think it calls for greater skill to achieve the music of half rhyme than to achieve the music of full rhyme. Full rhyme sometimes can have an artificial contrived sound and appearance to it, not half rhyme. Take a poem, The Underground, if any of you did that poem. Indeed, you don't need to have studied it to use it as an example of half rhyme again. Look at the end of the lines, running and gaining, ahead, read, crimson, button, trail, haul. Marvellous example of half rhyme. Now you'll find several examples there where Heaney can achieve full rhyme but I thought I might comment on that. Now throughout the poem you'll find several examples of assonance and alliteration and sibilance and be sure you have some of those learned off. Just returning very briefly to sensuous language, you could use the example of in the poem Bogland, the bog melting and opening underfoot. It is so sensuous you almost feel your feet sinking into the wet bogland, as if the bog were inviting you in to explore. Listen to this example from A Constable Calls, the fat black handle grips heating in the sun. You feel the heat, so sensuous is the language. Another one, butter recovered, salty and white. You can taste it, that's how sensuous the language is. Here's another one, the reddening stove sent a plaque of heat against her where she stood. You can feel the heat. And look at this from The Harvest Bow, in wheat that does not rust, what brightens as it tightens, twist by twist. You can hardly resist moving your fingers to plait the harvest bow, so sensuous is the language. You can take one from The Forge, the anvil's sharp pitched ring, you can hear it, that's how sensuous Seamus Heaney's language is. You have the hiss of the iron when it's cooled in the barrel of water, you can hear it. Now you can talk about Heaney's technique and you'll talk about his ability to use full rhyme. He's a master of all those skills. He can make brilliant and very effective use of half rhyme. He can use alliteration, try to have some examples. He can use assonance, have some examples there. He can use sibilance, you all know sibilance, that soft S and C sound recurring. And sometimes he can use onomatopoeia, and occasionally he can use words that actually convey sound. So that seems to be all I need to say now about Heaney's technique. They're all there, grounded, a wonderful authenticity, describing the past as it was, never glamorising it. Marvellous use of metaphor and simile, very accessible language, musical qualities. That is, I think, all we have to say about Heaney. And I'll finish up now by emphasising again how important it is for you in an examination on any poet to be able to focus not only on the themes, but equally importantly on the technique or the style. Most Leaving Cert questions will involve a focus on both the themes, that is the content, and the technique or style, which I've just been describing now. I hope everything will go well for you and that this talk will be of some value to you particularly in preparing for Heaney in the run-up to the Leaving Certificate examination. In the meantime, the very, very best of luck. And that was Dennis Craven from the Institute of Education, Leeson Street, Dublin, lecturing on the poetry of Seamith Heaney. Thank you, Dennis, for a very insightful and comprehensive analysis of the poetry of Seamith Heaney. We've come to the end of the programme for this week. Once again, a very special thanks to today's lecturer, Dennis Craven. Thanks to Bridie for her technical assistance and thank you at home for listening. Looking forward to your company next week. And from Bridie and Kathleen, bye for now.