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Heaney and the Famine: At a potato Digging and For the Commander of the Eliza
Continuing my preparation for teaching Death of a Naturalist, these two poems sit at the centre of the collection and lie at the heart of any discussion of Heritage and of the meaning of Irishness explored in the poems. We …
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Huckleberry Finn meets Bruce Springsteen
Whither Huck? He’s alive and well in Western Stars… It must be the summer. This post looks at the links between Huckleberry Finn and the many first person narrators in Bruce Springsteen’s new album: Western Stars. It is intended seriously, …
Follower, Heaney: thoughts on metre and language
Follower -note the lack of an article suggesting the whole range of potential meanings and sub-meanings to the word. Heaney is writing literally of a boy who followed his father around the fields and farm in his youth and who …
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Death of a Naturalist: a study in innocence.
In Death of a Naturalist, the title poem of the collection, Heaney explores ideas which will be key to these poems – the conflict inherent between innocence and experience and the sense of terror which drives a young man towards …
Heaney: Digging and the search for ‘the good turf’.
The collection Death of a Naturalist opens with the poem Heaney called a ‘strength giver’: Digging. If Personal Helicon summarises the ideas of the collection, it is this poem which asserts Heaney’s decision to honour the authenticity and labour of …
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Churning Day: Heaney. An analysis.
Another of the poems in the collection which considers the aging process as a conflict between innocence and experience, ultimately resulting in an epiphany as the older Heaney recognises the mundanity of something hitherto regarded as bordering on the magical …
On Personal Helicon: Heaney.
Personal Helicon for Michael Longley 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 …
