Seamus Heaney Biography
Seamus Heaney was born in April 1939 to an Irish family and was the oldest of nine. He attended a local primary school in his home in Mossbawn, and as a child, he also watched soldiers prepare for war and from his observation, he got the poetry inspiration. Heaney’s life was part of the historic transformation as well as geographical evolution where he was drawing other inspiration in for his poetry. He got a scholarship to study in a catholic boarding school called St. Columb’s College that was in the City of Derry. The departure of him from home to school was the first one ever for him to be so far from home, and it took him a lot of courage to take that step. After that, he would later move to Belfast and then to the Irish Republic where he made his permanent residence, and he developed his career by teaching in America regularly.
He described his journey of moving from his birthplace where he was a country boy to the world of enlightenment as movement from “the earth of farm labour to the heaven of education.” His works in spoetry farming activities such as digging. He learnt Irish and Latin got inand his poetry was developed and retrenched in the way of these languages together with Anglo-Saxon which he learnt when he was a student at the Queens University in Belfast (Richards, Pg 239-241) pHe captured the attention of the public when ihe was in a group of poets raand he shared with them the plight of coming from a society divided by strict religious and political boundaries. His work was influenced at this point by his experience on violence, polarization and tinner distrust.
Seamus Heaney married Marie Delvin who bore him three children. Marie came from a family of writers and poets. Marie also played an essential part in oof Seamus poetry as she was directly or indirectly talked about in the poems. She supported his passion fand rshe was also of oproffestional help to Seamus work. After mhis visit to America he resigned from his job as a lecturer in Queens University and focused on being a fulltime poet and free- lance writer. He later moved to Dublin and lectured at Crayfort College where he headed the English Department until 1982. He had an agreement with Harvard University to let him stay at home for eight months and this gave him time to work as a poet.
He worked with several artists such as Seamus Deane and Tom Paulin in a project whose main objective was to bring awareness to the members of Field Day theatre company about the importance involving creativity in finding solutions for social crisis that the country was experiencing at that given time. He was also working with David Hammond who was singer to bring intellectual and artistic focus on the political crisis in the Irish political life. Their cooperation therefore played an important role in the debate on culture which dominated two decades in the late 20th century in Ireland.
Blackberry Picking by Seamus Heaney
The poem has alliteration in its line to create musicality for entertainment. For example, the second line starts with, “for a full week,” which demonstrates alliteration. There is also appears because the poet uses words with closer sounds close to each other. An example is words like glossy clot and like thickened wine. The speaker also had a wonderful use of internal rhyme. When he uses words like week, green sweet, leaving and pea. The end rhyme of the poem is the same for two lines following each other and can be assigned letters to obtain a rhyme scheme like, “aabbcc…”
The first stanza of the poem talks about how nice it is to pick blackberries at the farm in the month of June when they are ripe. He looks back in time and remembers how the picking of the blackberries was anticipated if the rain was sufficient and there was enough sunshine for the ripening of the fruits. The speaker then talks about the first blackberry being picked by someone else, probably a friend of his and eaten when he says, “you ate the first one and its flesh was sweet.” This first blackberry stood out among the rest as it was, “a glossy purple clot among others, red, green and hard as knot.” (Cook et al.,) He compares the sweetness of the berry to thickened wine. The strong colour of wine left the tongues of those who ate it with the colour of the berry in their tongue and the sweetness prompted them to pick more.
Also, the first stanza talks basically about the buildup of flavour and goodness in the blueberries and the bountiful harvest of the well flourishing yields. The speaker talks about the success of the blueberry trees is t he says, “we trekked and picked until the jars were full.” It talks about how the speaker as a child, together with other children were very eager to have a taste of the blue berries. He also brings out the idea that hard work is rewarded by good things when he says, “being scratched, peppered with pricks, having to trek through the field with can.”
The second stanza contrasts the first stanza in bringing out the theme. The harvest is plenty and the speaker says, “when the baths were filled…” Then the reality sets in in line that say, “a rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache, and the juice was stinking too.” The berries got spoilt after they had been picked and it was painful for the speaker that he wanted to cry. The loss was great because so much berry was spoilt and it was the prayer of the speaker that the berries would remain fresh.
In conclusion the poem is a contrast between childhood and adulthood realities. The picking of the ripe and sweet blueberries is symbolic to the beauty and innocence of childhood. However, with the changing world, the hopes and dreams of the children turn into the rot and decay as the reality sets in. the second stanza has brought this out well when in the beginning the dreams are well organized and put together like, “we hoarded the berries in the byre.” Later on these dreams never get to be actualized and they end up not helping the individuals as in the line, “that all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.”
Death of Naturalists by Seamus Heaney.
The tone in the poem changes at certain points when the speaker seeks to create tension. For example, in the line that he says, “in the shade of the banks, here every spring. I will fill jampotfulls of jellied.” There is also alliteration that the speaker has utilized in his work by using words such as heavy headed and flax-dam festered. Heaney also utilized caesura which is when he placed a break or a pause in a line without utilizing a punctuation mark like for example, “…grass the angry frogs.” He also used assonance in his work by providing letters with similar sounds for musicality such as sound around and grass the angry. Onomatopoeia can be spotted when he says, “slap and slop…”
Heaney reflects about himself in this poem of how he was fascinated by the boggy area in his birth place as a child when he says, “all year the flax-dam festered in the earth.” He also focuses on the population of frogs and the reproductive life cycle of frogs when he points that out on the line that says, “of frogspawn that grew like clotted water. It shows that the dams had so many frogs that were visible and could not be ignored. The sight of frogs that looks like it was breath taking becomes a threat (De Leo and Matteo). This is because they are too many and they do not even allow the residents close to the dam fetch water. If at all they managed, then the water would be filled with eggs and tadpoles of frogs. The line demonstrating this is that which says, “the flattening dots burst into nibble swimming tadpoles.”
In the second stanza Heaney contrast his excitement with the tension that is created by the frogs that invade the dam flax with uncalled for menace. He demonstrates the possible danger that the frogs can cause when he says, “with cow dung in the grass and angry frogs Invaded the flax-dam.” His fascination had turned into a nightmare when he revisited the dam. The frogs which were once tadpoles were now croaking in a suggestive way and this he considered offensive when he says, “the slap and slops were obscene threat.” This wasn’t the dam he knew and he could not stand so “I sickened, turned and ran.
In conclusion Death of Naturalist is a poem that talks about loss of the innocence that childhood comes with. The first stanza is full of positive energy which is drawn from the observation of frogs. This excitement of seeing the frogs jumping in the pool show his innocence as a child, without realizing the dangers that the dam and the frogs pose to the environment. The first stanza captures the energy of the young speaker. The sight of the frogs is wonder and something spectacular to him. The second stanza on the other hand contrast the first one where it brings the fear as the male frogs loath and inversion. The male frogs come with so much noise and aggressive nature and the possible harm they can cause. Later when the tadpoles grow, it signifies how life has changed irreversibly.
References
Richards, Page. “Historical and Biographical Lyric.” a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 32.2 (2017): 239-241.
De Leo, Matteo. Family, Childhood and Nature: a reading of Seamus Heaney’s” Death of a Naturalist”. BS thesis. Università Ca’Foscari Venezia, 2019.
Cook, Guy, and Clyde Ancarno. ““I Do Still Love the Taste”: Taste as a Reason for Eating Non-human Animals.” ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment (2019).