Seamus+Heaney

Seamus Heaney

Biography  Seamus Heaney was born April 13, 1939 in Castledawson, County Derry, Northern Ireland. Seamus was the eldest of nine children, and grew up on a small farm in Castledawson. Seamus attended the primary school in his youth and at twelve years old, he recieved a scholarship to St. Columb's College. In 1957, Seamus moved to Belfast, Ireland and transfered to Queen's University and graduated from there in 1961. After graduating from Queen's College, Seamus attended St. Joseph's College and earned his teaching degree from there.

In 1962, a collection of poems by Patrick Kavanagh inspired Heaney to start publishing his own poetry. In 1963, Seamus accepted a teaching position of English at St. Joseph's college and while teaching there began writing. In doing so, he was able to contribut many articles to news papers and magazines. An English lecturer at Queen's College noticed some of Heaney's work and recognized him as a talent and helped him into a group in Belfast to develop his skills.

At the age of 26, in 1965 Seamus Heaney married Marie Delvi. In that same year, Heaney's first work "//Eleven Poems"// was published. Soon after, in 1966, "//Death of a Naturalist," and "Faber and Faber"// were published. After the success of these published works, Heaney was invited to be a lecturer of modern English at Queen's University in Belfast. After this time, many works including, "//Room to Rhyme", "Door into the Dark", and "Wintering Out."//

In 1974, Heaney recieved an invitation from Arts Council of the Republic of Ireland to join, and he willlingly accepted. One year later, in 1975, Heaney's "//North//," was realeased. Later, in 1980 //Preoccupations//: Selected Prose 1968-1978”and “Selected Poems 1965-1975, were released. One year later, in 1981, Seamus Heaney resigned from all of his positions in the Republic of Ireland, and moved to America to be a visiting professor at Harvard University. In 1982, He was given two honorary doctorates, from Fordham University in New York City and Queen's University in Belfast. In 1987, Seamus Heaney’s next volume entitled “//The Haw Lantern"// was released. A collection of essays entitled “//The Government of the Tongue//” was released in 1988.

In 1986 Heaney earned a Litt. D.(Litterarum Doctor or Doctor of Letters) from Bates College Seamus Heaney was elected as the Professor of Poetry in 1989 at the University of Oxford. Next, in 1991 "//Seeing Things"// was released. The most prominant award that Seamus Heaney was awarded, however, happened in 1995 when he was honored with the Nobel Prize for his outstanding contributions in the field of Literature. Seamus Heaney’s book entitled “//The Spirit Level//” earned the Whitbread Book of the Year Award in 1996. His next book “//Beowulf: A New Translation//” was also a success. Then, Heaney received an honorary doctorate from Rhodes University in 2002, and finally Heaney's volume of poetry entitled “//District and Circle//”, earned the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2006.

Seamus Heaney suffered a stroke in 2006, although he recovered from it, he could no longer make public appearances. Finally, In 2008 Seamus Heaney was honored as Artist of honor for his contributions to literature at O//stermarie//, Denmark. ​Writing Style Heaney uses the aspects of Irish culture, history, folklore, myth, and religion to get the Irish experience. So that only the readers can feel the Irish experience they can also relate with the Irish people. His writings also have a lot of inference to nature especially his favorite topic of Ireland. You can see this through the way he writes and developed his work with using such verses as "assensory experience of the memories that are triggered by the sound outside of his window. "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." (Heaney, 1990, p.2) Read more: [] People in his country that know him they and are close to him are very disappointed that he will or he never has tried to write about the Irish government and some of the problems that they are facing or that the country or certain nobility has faced in the past.

"Seamus Heaney." //Sinister Frog//. 14 Oct. 2009. Web. 15 Apr. 2010.

Poems and Analysis Ricardo Mason- All year the flax-dam festered in the heart

Of the townland; green and heavy headed

Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods.

Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun.

Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles

Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell.

There were dragon-flies, spotted butterflies,

But best of all was the warm thick slobber

Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water

In the shade of the banks. Here, every spring

I would fill jampotfuls of the jellied

Specks to range on window-sills at home,

On shelves at school, and wait and watch until

The fattening dots burst into nimble-

Swimming tadpoles. Miss Walls would tell us how

The daddy frog was called a bullfrog

And how he croaked and how the mammy frog

Laid hundreds of little eggs and this was

Frogspawn. You could tell the weather by frogs too

For they were yellow in the sun and brown

In rain.Then one hot day when fields were rank

With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs

Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedges

To a coarse croaking that I had not heard

Before. The air was thick with a bass chorus.

Right down the dam gross-bellied frogs were cocked

On sods; their loose necks pulsed like sails. Some hopped:

The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat

Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting.

I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings

Were gathered there for vengeance and I knew

That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.

In this poem Seamus "carefully crafted poetry has been praised for its powerful imagery, dense yet nuanced language, meaningful content, musical phrasing, and compelling rhythms."(infohio). He talks about his experiences with cathching frogs as a little boy, and how they related to his life. The poem uses very clear imagery. It is a combination of poems, writngs, and short stories compromised into a poem.He continues his story with the frogs and how they evolve in life and eventually grow up, being a metaphor for growing up for life and the world round us.

 http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nfh&AN=9FY4176546113&site=src-live

Mid-Term Break by Seamus Heaney I sat all morning in the college sick bay Counting bells knelling classes to a close. At two o'clock our neighbors drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying-- He had always taken funerals in his stride-- And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram When I came in, and I was embarrassed By old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were "sorry for my trouble," Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest, Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs. At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple, He lay in the four foot box as in his cot. No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four foot box, a foot for every year.

Analysis by: Adam Motz

In the above poem, Seamus is talking about the death of a family member of his. The story starts off with Seamus waiting to go home, and he is eagerly waiting for someone to take him home from college. He arrives at home to find his father crying, and he simply replies that, "He had always taken funerals in his stride". As he entered his home, there was tension as he met his mother, and everyone stared at him. His family member, most likely his brother, was the person who had died. He was at the young age of four years at the time of his death. He most likely died from a hit to his head when the poem stated, "Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple." You can also tell the age of the boy who died by the last line, "A four foot box, a foot for every year." By the title of this peom, one might feel that this is a happy moment for Seamus getting to come home for mid-term break while actually it is quite the opposite. He has to arrive how to find his younger brother dead at the age of four.

=**Blackberry Picking**= Late August, given heavy rain and sun for a full week, the blackberries would ripen. At first, just one, a glossy purple clot among others, red, green, hard as a knot. You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger sent us out with milk-cans, pea-tins, jam-pots where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots. Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills we trekked and picked until the cans were full, until the tinkling bottom had been covered with green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered with thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's. We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre. But when the bath was filled we found a fur, A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache. The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush the fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour. I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair that all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot. Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.

=**Poem Analysis-Randy Dameron**=

In this poem you get the sense that he has had much experience picking blackberries. The author seems to get a certain excitement in him by the time late August rolls around and it is time for the blackberries to come out. Every year though he seems to forget that time takes its toll on everything. The blackberries begin to grow fungus on them. They begin to die. Seamus thinks this is very unfair and is angered by what is happening. No matter how mad he would get however the following year would come around and the excitement of seeing those blackberries again would come to him.

Strange Fruit
Here is the girl's head like an exhumed gourd. Oval-faced, prune-skinned, prune-stones for teeth.

They unswaddled the wet fern of her hair And made an exhibition of its coil, Let the air at her leathery beauty. Pash of tallow, perishable treasure: Her broken nose is dark as a turf clod, Her eyeholes blank as pools in the old workings. Diodorus Siculus confessed His gradual ease with the likes of this: Murdered, forgotten, nameless, terrible Beheaded girl, outstaring axe And beatification, outstaring What had begun to feel like reverence.

Poem Analysis - Maggie Kutz This poem uses symbols just to make fun of how ugly a girl is. Her head is like a gourd with pruned skin and stones for teeth represent her misshapen head, her wrinkley skin, and her either crooked or ugly teeth. Her hair looks like an unswaddled fern. And saying she has leathery beauty is saying she is ugly. Her eyes show no emotion, and has the personality of what will be forgotten. Towards the end of the poem however, it discusses beatification, which means that the girl is dead and can go to heaven because she has recieved reverance for the thing she had done which got her beheaded which was mentioned earlier in the poem.