Exalting Everyday Miracles: The Poetry of Seamus Heaney

by Elizabeth Fritsch, senior English major at Silver Lake College

Seamus Heaney is probably one of the most well-known Irish writers of the last century.  Heaney published numerous volumes of poetry and received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995.  The Nobel Prize Committee described Heaney’s works as “works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past."  Heaney’s poems focus heavily on Irish topography, culture and heritage.

I first experienced Heaney’s poetry in the World Literature class I took as a college freshman.  Though I generally dislike poets who focus on nature in their poetry, I found Heaney’s approach to writing about nature to be a breath of fresh air.  Heaney’s ability to use the natural world to speak about the human experience is remarkable and captivating.   

Heaney was born in Northern Ireland in 1939 and was one of nine children.  He attended Queen’s University Belfast where he studied English Language and Literature.  He later was a Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard and the Oxford Professor of Poetry.  In addition to writing poetry, Heaney also translated works, most notably Beowulf.  Heaney died on August 30, 2013. 

“Digging” is one of Heaney’s most popular poems.  In “Digging,” Heaney compares the laborious work of working a field to the act of writing.  Both require an individual to “dig.”

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.

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.

As with many of his poems, “Blackberry-Picking” is heavily focused on the natural world and what can be learned by engaging with our environment.  Readers can almost taste the blackberries plucked in Heaney’s poem.  Readers also simultaneously experience youthful pleasure and disappointment that comes with maturity.  Heaney’s language is sensual and detailed, allowing the experience of blackberry-picking to come alive for the reader.

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.

Elizabeth Fritsch is a senior majoring
in English (teaching emphasis) and minoring
in History and Theology.  Her favorite poem
by Heaney is "The Plantation."