Source
of book: I own Opened Ground, selected poems from 1966 through
1996.
My
wife found this mint condition “used” copy of the book for me. As is my
practice, I am reading through it systematically. Since both of Heaney’s first
two collections (or at least the excerpts in this book) are fairly short, I
decided to read both. Since both were published in the 1960s, I will consider
it a decade of reading.
I
admit to being a fan of Seamus Heaney, both for his poetry and the way he read
it. My first real introduction was through The Spirit Level,
which remains my favorite of his books. “Mint” in particular is one of my all
time favorite poems. I also enjoyed his translation of Beowulf, which adds so much to the story
because of its keen ear for sound and rhythm.
The
collection kicks off with what is probably Heaney’s best known poem, “Digging.”
Here is the classic video of him reading it.
The
title for the first collection comes from a poem about the young poet losing
his appetite for collecting frog eggs after fearing the frogs would have their
revenge on him. I won’t quote the whole thing, but it is an amusing poem.
Here
are the ones which I liked best:
“Personal
Helicon”
As a child, they could
not keep me from wells
And old pumps with
buckets and windlasses.
I loved the dark drop,
the trapped sky, the smells
Of waterweed, fungus
and dank moss.
One, in a brickyard,
with a rotted board top.
I savoured the rich
crash when a bucket
Plummeted down at the
end of a rope.
So deep you saw no
reflection in it.
A shallow one under a
dry stone ditch
Fructified like any
aquarium.
When you dragged out
long roots from the soft mulch
A white face hovered
over the bottom.
Others had echoes,
gave back your own call
With a clean new music
in it. And one
Was scaresome, for
there, out of ferns and tall
Foxgloves, a rat
slapped across my reflection.
Now, to pry into
roots, to finger slime,
To stare, big-eyed
Narcissus, into some spring
Is beneath all adult
dignity. I rhyme
To see myself, to set
the darkness echoing.
Yep,
I’m a bit like that myself.
“The Peninsula”
When you have nothing
more to say, just drive
For a day all round
the peninsula.
The sky is tall as
over a runway,
The land without
marks, so you will not arrive
But pass through,
though always skirting landfall.
At dusk, horizons
drink down sea and hill,
The ploughed field
swallows the whitewashed gable
And you're in the dark
again. Now recall
The glazed foreshore
and silhouetted log,
That rock where
breakers shredded into rags,
The leggy birds
stilted on their own legs,
Islands riding
themselves out into the fog,
And drive back home,
still with nothing to say
Except that now you
will uncode all landscapes
By this: things
founded clean on their own shapes,
Water and ground in
their extremity.
I
love exploration, whether on foot or by car, and Heaney makes this one come
alive. In these days when a lot of my favorite places are closed to slow Covid-19,
I am enjoying poems about places. I look forward to better days ahead.
This
next one is a fascinating, multi-layered poem that gets better with each
reading. The title, “Undine,” refers to a water sprite in European mythology.
As the inspiration (in part) for The Little Mermaid, undines cannot gain
a soul unless they marry a human. However, they will die of the human is
unfaithful to them. In this poem, Heaney melds the legend of the undine with a
farmer cleaning out his ditch. The language does so many things. It evokes the
smell of mud and earth and stagnant water. But it is also shockingly sexual.
Bringing together all those elements: the earth, mythology, and sex in a way
that unexpectedly works is one of Heaney’s best skills.
“Undine”
He slashed the briars,
shoveled up grey silt
To give me right of
way in my own drains
And I ran quick for
him, cleaned out my rust.
He halted, saw me
finally disrobed,
Running clear, with
apparent unconcern.
Then he walked by me.
I rippled and I churned
Where ditches
intersected near the river
Until he dug a spade
deep in my flank
And took me to him. I
swallowed his trench
Gratefully, dispersing
myself for love
Down in his roots,
climbing his brassy grain ---
But once he know my
welcome, I alone
Could give him subtle
increase and reflection.
He explored me so
completely, each limb
Lost its cold freedom.
Human, warmed to him.
The
second half of the second collection has a lot of poems about the “lough” (Irish
version of “loch”) and the surrounding bog. Two of those poems seemed
particularly lovely to me. Enjoy.
“Relic of
Memory”
The lough waters
Can petrify wood:
Old oars and posts
Over the years
Harden their grain,
Incarcerate ghosts
Of sap and season.
The shallows lap
And give and take:
Constant ablutions,
Such a drowning love
Stun a stake
To stalagmite.
Dead lava,
The cooling star,
Coal and diamond
Or sudden birth
Of burnt meteor
Are too simple,
Without the lure
That relic stored—
A piece of stone
On the shelf at
school,
Oatmeal coloured.
“Bogland”
We have no prairies
To slice a big sun at
evening--
Everywhere the eye
concedes to
Encrouching horizon,
Is wooed into the
cyclops' eye
Of a tarn. Our
unfenced country
Is bog that keeps
crusting
Between the sights of
the sun.
They've taken the
skeleton
Of the Great Irish Elk
Out of the peat, set
it up
An astounding crate
full of air.
Butter sunk under
More than a hundred
years
Was recovered salty
and white.
The ground itself is
kind, black butter
Melting and opening
underfoot,
Missing its last
definition
By millions of years.
They'll never dig coal
here,
Only the waterlogged
trunks
Of great firs, soft as
pulp.
Our pioneers keep
striking
Inwards and downwards,
Every layer they strip
Seems camped on
before.
The bogholes might be
Atlantic seepage.
The wet centre is
bottomless.
That
line “an astounding crate of air” describing the elk fossil is brilliant and
unforgettable. I love the whole poem and its imagery.
I’m
not sure what else to say about Heaney. I love his style, including the
peculiar use of enjambment across stanzas. The poems are fairly traditional,
yet not exactly regular or rhymed. I am never disappointed to read Seamus
Heaney.
No comments:
Post a Comment