Stuff I looked up
Apr. 24th, 2007 02:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethSeamus Heaney, Punishment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seamus_Heaney
eldest of nine
Northern Ireland
raised as a Roman Catholic and a nationalist
In 1975 Heaney published his fourth volume, North.
work often deals with the local
Hints of sectarian violence, which began just as his writing career did, can be found in many of his poems, even works that on the surface appear to deal with something else.
Like the Troubles themselves, Heaney's work is deeply associated with the lessons of history, sometimes even prehistory.
http://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/poems/heaney/biography.php
Heaney was born on April 13, 1939, the eldest of nine children, to Margaret and Patrick Heaney, at the family farm, Mossbawn, about 30 miles northwest of Belfast in County Derry.
In 1975 North was published, winning the E.M. Forster Award and the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize.
The first poem in this archive, "Personal Helicon," introduces an abiding interest, a concern for that which lies deep within the earth.
"Bogland," the final poem in his second volume, presents once again his fascination with things buried. He acknowledges an attachment to the soil that is the source and subject of his poetry. The catalog of objects, buried in bogs for years, sometimes centuries, and dug up in remarkable condition, encompasses the vegetable world ("waterlogged trunks / of great firs"), the animal world ("the skeleton / of the Great Irish Elk"), and the human world ("Butter sunk under / More than a hundred years"). Perhaps with hindsight we see a progression toward the bog's most important preservation, a human being.
Hard on the publication of P.V. Glob's The Bog People, detailing the discovery of a series of bodies over 2000 years old in the bogs of Denmark, Heaney's metaphor, begun in "Bogland," reaches its ultimate fruition. In Glob's book, Heaney found the consummation of his descent into the earth. His series of "Bog Poems" (including "The Tollund Man") address, through a study of these victims of tribal sacrifice and punishment, the political and social situation in his native Northern Ireland. Heaney's fascination with the past allows him to comment on the present in an oblique yet forceful way. Perhaps the most striking of these poems is "Punishment," where he sees in the corpse of a ritually sacrificed woman an echo of the Catholic women in Northern Ireland who are tarred and chained to their front porches for dating British soldiers. He acknowledges his guilt for implicit participation in such terrible deeds, because he "would have cast, I know / the stones of silence." He recognizes his own conflicting feelings, this man
who would connive
in civilized outrage
yet understand the exact
and tribal, intimate revenge.
http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=1392
(has audio recordings of some poems)
eldest child of nine born to a farming family in County Derry, Northern Ireland.
Heaney's poetry is grounded in actual, local detail
finds a moment of horror at nature that is all the more telling for the precise details
Recent Irish history is one of the strongest influences on these details, appearing in its most outspoken form in the poems from North
Geoffrey Hill, September Song
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seamus_Heaney
eldest of nine
Northern Ireland
raised as a Roman Catholic and a nationalist
In 1975 Heaney published his fourth volume, North.
work often deals with the local
Hints of sectarian violence, which began just as his writing career did, can be found in many of his poems, even works that on the surface appear to deal with something else.
Like the Troubles themselves, Heaney's work is deeply associated with the lessons of history, sometimes even prehistory.
http://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/poems/heaney/biography.php
Heaney was born on April 13, 1939, the eldest of nine children, to Margaret and Patrick Heaney, at the family farm, Mossbawn, about 30 miles northwest of Belfast in County Derry.
In 1975 North was published, winning the E.M. Forster Award and the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize.
The first poem in this archive, "Personal Helicon," introduces an abiding interest, a concern for that which lies deep within the earth.
"Bogland," the final poem in his second volume, presents once again his fascination with things buried. He acknowledges an attachment to the soil that is the source and subject of his poetry. The catalog of objects, buried in bogs for years, sometimes centuries, and dug up in remarkable condition, encompasses the vegetable world ("waterlogged trunks / of great firs"), the animal world ("the skeleton / of the Great Irish Elk"), and the human world ("Butter sunk under / More than a hundred years"). Perhaps with hindsight we see a progression toward the bog's most important preservation, a human being.
Hard on the publication of P.V. Glob's The Bog People, detailing the discovery of a series of bodies over 2000 years old in the bogs of Denmark, Heaney's metaphor, begun in "Bogland," reaches its ultimate fruition. In Glob's book, Heaney found the consummation of his descent into the earth. His series of "Bog Poems" (including "The Tollund Man") address, through a study of these victims of tribal sacrifice and punishment, the political and social situation in his native Northern Ireland. Heaney's fascination with the past allows him to comment on the present in an oblique yet forceful way. Perhaps the most striking of these poems is "Punishment," where he sees in the corpse of a ritually sacrificed woman an echo of the Catholic women in Northern Ireland who are tarred and chained to their front porches for dating British soldiers. He acknowledges his guilt for implicit participation in such terrible deeds, because he "would have cast, I know / the stones of silence." He recognizes his own conflicting feelings, this man
who would connive
in civilized outrage
yet understand the exact
and tribal, intimate revenge.
http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=1392
(has audio recordings of some poems)
eldest child of nine born to a farming family in County Derry, Northern Ireland.
Heaney's poetry is grounded in actual, local detail
finds a moment of horror at nature that is all the more telling for the precise details
Recent Irish history is one of the strongest influences on these details, appearing in its most outspoken form in the poems from North
Geoffrey Hill, September Song