Dublin's Seamus Heaney in repose
Poetry is the bridge between the mind and the heart where
feelings become words and none was more accomplished at that gift than Dublin's
Seamus Heaney ~ the Irish poet, playwright, translator and lecturer, and the
recipient of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. His light will be missed in
the gathering darkness of our present times: Allen L Roland
As a writer, columnist and
amateur poet, I recognize and relish the power of poetry and the emotional
impact of putting feelings into words but it is implicit in Seamus Heaney's
view of poetry ~ "poetry as divination, poetry as revelation of
the self to the self, as restoration of the culture to itself; poems as
elements of continuity, with the aura and authenticity of archaeological finds, where the buried shard
has an importance that is not diminished by the importance of the buried city;
poetry as a dig, a dig for finds that end up being plants. ‘Digging’, in fact, was the name of the
first poem I wrote where I thought my feelings had got into words, or to put it
more accurately, where I thought my feel had got into words. Its rhythms
and noises still please me, although there are a couple of lines in it that
have more of the theatricality of the gunslinger than the self-absorption of
the digger. I wrote it in the summer of 1964, almost two years after I had
begun to ‘dabble in verses’. This was the first place where I felt I had
done more than make an arrangement of words: I felt that I had let down a shaft
into real life. The facts and surfaces of the thing were true, but more
important, the excitement that came from naming them gave me a kind of
insouciance and a kind of confidence. I didn’t care who thought what about
it: somehow, it had surprised me by coming out with a stance and an idea
that I would stand over"
Preoccupations: Selected Prose, 1968-1978
(London: Faber & Faber, 1980), 41-60
Digging
"Between my finger and
my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.
Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.
The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.
Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.
The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.
By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.
My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.
The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it."
Just like his old man.
My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.
The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it."
And dig with it, he
did ~ here's a two minute video of Seamus
reading one of his early poems, Scaffolding on his 70th birthday. 2
minute video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNYBwF7lKLA
Here’s
Heaney's poem about a budding young love where he perfectly captures the
feelings of youthful anticipation and excitement of an early evening walk
together by the river.
Twice Shy
"Her scarf a la
Bardot,
In suede flats for the walk,
She came with me one evening
For air and friendly talk.
We crossed the quiet river,
Took the embankment walk.
Traffic holding its breath,
Sky a tense diaphragm:
Dusk hung like a backcloth
That shook where a swan swam,
Tremulous as a hawk
Hanging deadly, calm.
A vacuum of need
Collapsed each hunting heart
But tremulously we held
As hawk and prey apart,
Preserved classic decorum,
Deployed our talk with art.
Our Juvenilia
Had taught us both to wait,
Not to publish feeling
And regret it all too late -
Mushroom loves already
Had puffed and burst in hate.
So, chary and excited,
As a thrush linked on a hawk,
We thrilled to the March twilight
With nervous childish talk:
Still waters running deep
Along the embankment walk."
In suede flats for the walk,
She came with me one evening
For air and friendly talk.
We crossed the quiet river,
Took the embankment walk.
Traffic holding its breath,
Sky a tense diaphragm:
Dusk hung like a backcloth
That shook where a swan swam,
Tremulous as a hawk
Hanging deadly, calm.
A vacuum of need
Collapsed each hunting heart
But tremulously we held
As hawk and prey apart,
Preserved classic decorum,
Deployed our talk with art.
Our Juvenilia
Had taught us both to wait,
Not to publish feeling
And regret it all too late -
Mushroom loves already
Had puffed and burst in hate.
So, chary and excited,
As a thrush linked on a hawk,
We thrilled to the March twilight
With nervous childish talk:
Still waters running deep
Along the embankment walk."
As
Margalit Fox writes in the New York Times ~ " Throughout his work, Mr. Heaney was consumed with
morality. In his hands, a peat bog is not merely an emblematic feature of the
Irish landscape; it is also a spiritual quagmire, evoking the deep ethical
conundrums that have long pervaded the place ~ “Yeats, despite being quite well known, despite his public role,
actually didn’t have anything like the celebrity or, frankly, the ability to
touch the people in the way that Seamus did,” Mr. Muldoon, a winner of the
Pulitzer Prize and the poetry editor at The New Yorker, said in an interview on
Friday. “It was almost like he was indistinguishable from the country. He
was like a rock star who also happened to be a poet.” See times article ~ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/31/arts/seamus-heaney-acclaimed-irish-poet-dies-at-74.html?emc=eta1&_r=0
In his 1995 Nobel acceptance speech, Seamus Heaney said that
he prized the sort of poem that provides not just “a surprising variation
played upon the world,” but “a retuning of the world itself” ~ delivering
a visceral surprise, “like the impatient thump which unexpectedly
restores the picture to the television set, or the electric shock which sets
the fibrillating heart back to its proper rhythm.”
And Seamus Heaney has
indeed, in this time of gathering darkness, caught many of our hearts off guard
and brought them back to their proper rhythm ~ as seen in this prophetic poem.
Postscript
"And some time make
the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightening of flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully-grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you'll park or capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open."
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightening of flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully-grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you'll park or capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open."
In "Station
Island " Heaney, through the eyes of the ghost of James Joyce,
offers some important advice for writers and poets to write for the joy of it ~
“... Keep
at a tangent.
When they make the circle wide, it’s time to swim
out on your own and fill the element
with signatures on your own frequency,
echo soundings, searches, probes, allurements,
elver-gleams in the dark of the whole sea.”
When they make the circle wide, it’s time to swim
out on your own and fill the element
with signatures on your own frequency,
echo soundings, searches, probes, allurements,
elver-gleams in the dark of the whole sea.”
The
important point here is that Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney not only saw through
different eyes but he also had the courage to dig for and share what he
discovered through his poetic heart.
The
Robin doesn't sing because its happy, its happy because it sings.
Allen
L Roland
Freelance Alternative
Press Online columnist and transformational counselor
Allen L Roland is available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and
private Skype consultations allen@allenroland.com
Allen
L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and
lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his web log and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a
monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net
Fittingly Heaney'a final words, in a text message from his hospital bed to his wife, Marie, were "Don't be afraid"
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