Seamus Heaney was a poet whose
poetry I appreciated more when hearing it read.
This was due to his long,
unbroken sentences which often continued for several lines and his Iish vernacular
which I had a hard time grasping.
But this is not a criticism. He was a superb poet for several
reasons. For one, I have always been leery
of poets who look to the natural world for metaphorical devices for their poetic
meaning. It is an overdone technique and
genuinely awful when done badly.
But in poems like “Blackberry-Picking”
and “Death of a Naturalist” Heaney made the connection of meaning with intense
imagery densely packed together.
Heaney also knew how to slip
in and out of moods. In “Mid-Term Break” The actions he takes to get back in
time to his family’s home and assist with his younger brother’s funeral are
movement delicately dancing with melancholy and sorrow.
When I taught the IGCSE
English syllabus, Heaney’s poems were one of the selected texts. The students found them a little bit
difficult but that’s okay....Good poetry can be difficult.
Powerful, evocative verse
doesn’t have to be easy.
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