Seamus Heaney

The Forge

  • Written about a blacksmith Heaney often passed as a child, he would look in and imagine the goings on inside. He then imagines the blacksmith on a smoking break, realising that his craft is going out of business through modern technology.

  • Written in Petrarchan sonnet

Themes: Craft (forging), Poetry, Progression, Childhood

Quotes;

  • “All I know is a door into the dark” - Heaney has never seen the inside of the forge

  • “Outside, old axles and iron hoops rusting” - Already tools and equipment around the blacksmith are beginning to grow old

  • Set there immovable, an alter” - Heaney has great respect for the craft, likening it to the alter in a church

  • “He leans out on the jamb, recalls a clatter of hoofs where traffic is flashing in rows” - The horses which he has built his craft around (horseshoes) are slowly being replaced by the modern cars

  • “Then grunts and goes in” - nothing is to be done, he just has to get back to work

Sunlight

  • Written about his childhood home in Mossbawn, Heaney recalls baking with his aunt in the kitchen. In contrast with the rest of Northern Ireland, which at the time was experiencing the growing tensions of The Troubles, here it is peaceful

  • Heaney was the eldest child, and so with his mother being too busy or pregnant with his siblings, his aunt was often the one left to raise him as she had more time for him.

Themes: Childhood, Family, Craft (baking), Lack of conflict

Quotes;

  • “There was a sunlit absence” - outside, the sun was beginning to set. It is warm, like his nostalgia for this time

  • “Her hands scuffled over the bakeboard” - the aunt is baking

  • “Now sits, broad-lapped” - Heaney speaks of her figure and shape fondly

  • “And measeling shins” - despite the red spots of ageing on her legs, she still works hard over the stove

  • “And here is love like a tinsmith’s stove” - a metaphor for his aunts deep love for him, everything she does is surrounded by love and warmth

The Harvest Bow

  • Written about a harvest bow his father had gifted him, Heaney uses it in this poem as a metaphor for his fathers love for him. His father struggled to express his love for him, but the act of gifting his son the harvest bow was meant as an ‘I love you’

  • Heaney looks back on the bow in later life, remembering his father after his death

  • He also believes that, in the modern world, crafts such as creating a harvest bow are being lost amongst the next generations

Themes: Family, Childhood, Craft (weaving), Progression

Quotes;

  • “As you plaited the harvest bow you implicated the mellowed silence in you” - Heaneys father hopes that this gift will be a substitute for the fact he never openly spoke his affections

  • “In wheat that does not rust” - wheat will never rot or spoil, showcasing that his fathers love for him will never die

  • “I tell and finger it like braille, gleaming the unsaid off the palpable” - Heaney can see his fathers love for him reflected in the bow

  • “That original townland still tongue-tied in the straw tied by your hand” - all the men of his fathers generation are unable to speak and properly express themselves

  • “Yet burned by its passage, and still warm” - despite all the time that’s passed, Heaney can still feel his fathers love shining through the bow

A Call

  • Written about a phone call home to his parents, where when his mother leaves to go retrieve his father he’s left alone on the phone he contemplates how time is running out for his parents.

  • After he realises this, when his father picks up the phone, he almost says I love you to him, but is still totally unable to

Themes: Family, Progression, Craft (gardening)

Quotes;

  • “Touching, inspecting, separating one stalk from the other” - his father is a very attentive gardener

  • “Pleased to feel each little weed-root break, but rueful also…” - despite the fact he’s de-weeding his garden, he still feels sympathy for the plants he’s killing

  • “The amplified grave ticking of hall clock” - Heaney, in the silence while his mother is away, thinks about the silence that will fall on the house once his parents die

  • “And I found myself thinking; if it were nowadays, this is how Death would summon Everyman” - a slight bit of humor, where Heaney imagines death calling someone rather than appearing on their doorstep

  • “Next thing he spoke and I almost said I loved him” - Heaney is still totally unable to speak words of affection to his father, despite the fact he was only just thinking about his death

Tate’s Avenue

  • Written about times Heaney spent on rugs with his soon-to-be wife, whether that be losing someone’s virginity on the beach, eating picnics in Spain, or lounging in Belfast on a Sunday

  • Heaney, bored of reading, tries to initiate sex with his wife, but she’s busy reading and refuses. Heaney, left with his erection, tries to calm himself down.

  • The poem itself is a metaphor for the current political situation in Belfast, the discomfort that everyone is living with.

Themes: Love, Conflict

Quotes;

  • “Instead again, its locked-park Sunday Belfast” - due to Sunday being a holy day, everything public was closed, and so people had to find their own entertainment

  • “As a page is turned, a finger twirls warm hair” - while they’re reading, Heaney tries to nudge his wife for sex

  • “And nothing gives on the rug or the ground beneath it” - his wife ignores him

  • “Keen-sensed more than ever through discomfort” - while very aware of his arousal, he can’t do anything about it

  • “When we moved I had your measure an you had mine” - despite the fact she didn’t want to sleep with him in the moment, nothing has changed between them