It’s possible to admire a poet’s skill and still not like the result. The only image in this poem that I like is the cave- the rest is manipulation. The cave feels like a beginning, like returning to a place before (maybe before they had children?). Some men can’t take the backseat to their kids. They can’t stand not being the center of attention, of having to be the adult. Heaney sounds like one of those men, but he thinks the problem is something else. It’s just boring at this point. But maybe in 1972 the idea of a man taking responsibility for his part in an unhappy relationship was a new thing.
That's a good explanation of this poem, mermcoelho!
Your guess(?) that men in 1972 taking any responsibility for their part in an unhappy relationship being a new thing sounds pretty spot-on, thinking back to then when I was a teenager. We just accepted that White Male Entitlement was a given, and for most men "Women's Lib" was a joke! (It wasn't a big enough deal yet to be a threat to men.)
I'm part of that awkward generation of men who weren't born into the idea that as a Straight White Man I might have to share, but we were told that as Straight White Men we believed in Being Fair...
which sometimes meant we were able to reach out beyond our societal conditioning, somewhat?
It's a whole thing, and doesn't reflect well on my gender, race or sexuality—and certainly not on my generation, when you see guys my age scrambling back to what their Daddies told them, and end up voting for Trump and some lunatic view of Country.
I can forgive Seamus Heaney his poetical sins after I read many years ago a description in the Guardian of school age Irish girls walking up to him in the street in Ireland sharing poems they had read of his in school. The Guardian author couldn’t imagine witnessing a contemporary English poet being recognized and loved by random English school girls.
I have to admire an artist that attune with his culture. Of course you have to have the culture that values artists.
Yes fame for a poet probably has more to do with the culture’s interest in poetry than the poet’s quality, but I did feel there was affection there and understanding
Boland's non-poetry volume about being a female Irish poet/writer, Object Lessons, is also a wonderful read, as is her deep dive into poetical forms, The Making of a Poem, co-written with the also wonderful Mark Strand. For poetry amateurs like me, this volume is all the things I somehow never learned about “pomes” in school. She left us quite a legacy. It is a huge regret that I was unable to ever encounter her in person.
Love the line "My children weep out the hot foreign night" but then I don't like that he used "out" again in the next line, but then the reading pattern there kind of de-stresses the word...anyway, yes, thank you for writing about poetry.
What jumped out at me from that line — as much as anything else in the poem — is that he said "my children," not "our children." Also, he doesn't say anything about going to comfort the weeping children, who were at the time, if the above chronology is correct, 3 and 1 years old. I suppose that if he had gone to comfort them it would have yielded a much different poem, but it could easily have been as good as or better than this one.
I agree with Noah that the poem is full of fancy-pants diction that doesn't add much of anything to its force. It's just kind of fusty.
It’s possible to admire a poet’s skill and still not like the result. The only image in this poem that I like is the cave- the rest is manipulation. The cave feels like a beginning, like returning to a place before (maybe before they had children?). Some men can’t take the backseat to their kids. They can’t stand not being the center of attention, of having to be the adult. Heaney sounds like one of those men, but he thinks the problem is something else. It’s just boring at this point. But maybe in 1972 the idea of a man taking responsibility for his part in an unhappy relationship was a new thing.
Thank you for writing about poetry.
That's a good explanation of this poem, mermcoelho!
Your guess(?) that men in 1972 taking any responsibility for their part in an unhappy relationship being a new thing sounds pretty spot-on, thinking back to then when I was a teenager. We just accepted that White Male Entitlement was a given, and for most men "Women's Lib" was a joke! (It wasn't a big enough deal yet to be a threat to men.)
I'm part of that awkward generation of men who weren't born into the idea that as a Straight White Man I might have to share, but we were told that as Straight White Men we believed in Being Fair...
https://youtu.be/A03ZJPVon-M?si=F8A8pVXKK0U1A9sy
😁
which sometimes meant we were able to reach out beyond our societal conditioning, somewhat?
It's a whole thing, and doesn't reflect well on my gender, race or sexuality—and certainly not on my generation, when you see guys my age scrambling back to what their Daddies told them, and end up voting for Trump and some lunatic view of Country.
I can forgive Seamus Heaney his poetical sins after I read many years ago a description in the Guardian of school age Irish girls walking up to him in the street in Ireland sharing poems they had read of his in school. The Guardian author couldn’t imagine witnessing a contemporary English poet being recognized and loved by random English school girls.
I have to admire an artist that attune with his culture. Of course you have to have the culture that values artists.
I think fame is just kind of fame? I don’t think it really has much to do with artistic quality one way or the other…
Of course, I’m kind of weird for thinking Heaney has poetical sins to begin with!
Yes fame for a poet probably has more to do with the culture’s interest in poetry than the poet’s quality, but I did feel there was affection there and understanding
Not every poem written by a great poet is great, but I quite love Heaney's "Postscript". And my favorite Irish poet - by far - is Eavon Boland.
I haven't read much Boland! Have to put them on the list...
Boland's non-poetry volume about being a female Irish poet/writer, Object Lessons, is also a wonderful read, as is her deep dive into poetical forms, The Making of a Poem, co-written with the also wonderful Mark Strand. For poetry amateurs like me, this volume is all the things I somehow never learned about “pomes” in school. She left us quite a legacy. It is a huge regret that I was unable to ever encounter her in person.
I am obscurely happy that you too dislike this poem’s muscularity.
Love the line "My children weep out the hot foreign night" but then I don't like that he used "out" again in the next line, but then the reading pattern there kind of de-stresses the word...anyway, yes, thank you for writing about poetry.
What jumped out at me from that line — as much as anything else in the poem — is that he said "my children," not "our children." Also, he doesn't say anything about going to comfort the weeping children, who were at the time, if the above chronology is correct, 3 and 1 years old. I suppose that if he had gone to comfort them it would have yielded a much different poem, but it could easily have been as good as or better than this one.
I agree with Noah that the poem is full of fancy-pants diction that doesn't add much of anything to its force. It's just kind of fusty.