Seamus Heaney Poems
Good Afternoon all,
I have been asked before you today to discuss my opinion on the poetry of Seamus Heaney, and although this style of learning wouldn’t be what you’d be used to, I’m hoping you will all benefit from what I have to say and leave here with a clear understanding of Heaney’s brilliance, questioning the meaning behind what he has written.
I have decided to take a thematic approach to this discussion rather than spend set time talking about one poem at a time, only for you to grow confused at the end when thinking about which poem a certain idea has come from as I move from one to other. Instead I’ve decided to compare four of my favourite Heaney poems under three headings. The poems I have chosen are ‘A Constable Calls’, ‘The Forge’, ‘The Skunk’ and ‘A Call’. The three themes I’ve found to be recurring throughout his work are, Love, Time and Isolation.
While I was studying Heaney’s poetry I noticed that he talks of Love in many different ways throughout his work. The first of these forms of Love is the love you would all know whether it be from personal experience or just the natural occurrence we see on a daily basis. This love I speak of, is the love Heaney has for his wife as expressed in the poem ‘The Skunk’. The poem is more or less a detailed description of a skunk Heaney sees while he is away on work and how he compares the skunk to his wife. Now you may be thinking to yourself, why would anyone compare someone they love to something as disgusting as a skunk? Well the answer to that is through how Heaney does it; he looks past the infamous pungent smell given off by these animals to show us the glamorous and graceful nature of these creatures. In the poem Heaney sees “the intent and glamorous, ordinary, mysterious skunk”, each night he expects “her like a visitor”, any hint of this skunk being in anyway horrible is totally absent in this poem. Sensual images such as the “desk light softened” or how the “small oranges loomed” are created
I have been asked before you today to discuss my opinion on the poetry of Seamus Heaney, and although this style of learning wouldn’t be what you’d be used to, I’m hoping you will all benefit from what I have to say and leave here with a clear understanding of Heaney’s brilliance, questioning the meaning behind what he has written.
I have decided to take a thematic approach to this discussion rather than spend set time talking about one poem at a time, only for you to grow confused at the end when thinking about which poem a certain idea has come from as I move from one to other. Instead I’ve decided to compare four of my favourite Heaney poems under three headings. The poems I have chosen are ‘A Constable Calls’, ‘The Forge’, ‘The Skunk’ and ‘A Call’. The three themes I’ve found to be recurring throughout his work are, Love, Time and Isolation.
While I was studying Heaney’s poetry I noticed that he talks of Love in many different ways throughout his work. The first of these forms of Love is the love you would all know whether it be from personal experience or just the natural occurrence we see on a daily basis. This love I speak of, is the love Heaney has for his wife as expressed in the poem ‘The Skunk’. The poem is more or less a detailed description of a skunk Heaney sees while he is away on work and how he compares the skunk to his wife. Now you may be thinking to yourself, why would anyone compare someone they love to something as disgusting as a skunk? Well the answer to that is through how Heaney does it; he looks past the infamous pungent smell given off by these animals to show us the glamorous and graceful nature of these creatures. In the poem Heaney sees “the intent and glamorous, ordinary, mysterious skunk”, each night he expects “her like a visitor”, any hint of this skunk being in anyway horrible is totally absent in this poem. Sensual images such as the “desk light softened” or how the “small oranges loomed” are created