Heaney

[marymck]

I can't believe he's gone.

By God, the old man could handle a pen.

Sleep well x

[Tim Lund]

Whatever you say, say nothing

[Robin Orton]

I must say that I've never quite 'got' Heaney. I find his tone a bit too flat, conversational, reasonable. His verse doesn't seem to sing, somehow. I can't think of a line of his poetry that 'when I am shaving of a morning [and it] strays into my memory, my skin bristles so that the razor ceases to act', as Housman put it.

Can anyone help me?

[marymck]

I must say that I've never quite 'got' Heaney. I find his tone a bit too flat, conversational, reasonable. His verse doesn't seem to sing, somehow. I can't think of a line of his poetry that 'when I am shaving of a morning [and it] strays into my memory, my skin bristles so that the razor ceases to act', as Housman put it.

Can anyone help me?

Maybe your razor is too good. Try a plastic Bic disposable.

No Robin and Rod I can't help either of you. Words either speak to your heart or they do not. I feel a loss today. The loss of a good man of wonderful heart and words.

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[Tim Lund]

I must say that I've never quite 'got' Heaney. I find his tone a bit too flat, conversational, reasonable. His verse doesn't seem to sing, somehow. I can't think of a line of his poetry that 'when I am shaving of a morning [and it] strays into my memory, my skin bristles so that the razor ceases to act', as Housman put it.

Can anyone help me?

Do you read him, or hear him? I ask because I never 'got' Burns until I came across someone casually reciting him as a way of dealing with boredom while we were both picking hops. He was a Scot, though with the sort of educated Edinburgh accent which barely registered to my not so received RP. But there was something in the intonation which at least helped me understand there was something to get, since when I've read a certain amount of Burns, and I'm sure that experience helped. OTOH, it's the content and context which speaks to me about his poetry, as much as the sound and rhythms, which I fear will always be a bit alien.

I suspect much the same happens for me with Heaney. Thinking about it, there are three of his poems I think of immediately - "Whatever you say, say nothing", "Half term break" and "My passport's green" - two of which have a strong political message which I can, as you say 'get'. I've also heard him, although not that much. It's possible that from having worked for a while in Ireland, I get Irish intonations - I'm certainly conscious of how the Irish use the English language differently, even if I don't have the words to say how.

In contrast, I think of a couple of poets much more from my own cultural background, Arnold and Auden, who I think I 'get' in that immediate way simply from reading, even as I am often painfully aware of not getting their content and references - e.g. the difference between what I might get from a first reading of 'September 1, 1939', and what Brodsky got.

So Robin, there may by now be no hope for you regarding Heaney, and little for me either, but you should not let it bother you. OTOH, it may be that it's the reasonable, conversational tone which gets in the way, for you; it's an inflated rhetorical tone which turns me off, which is why, for example, I struggle with Shelley.

[Tim Lund]

Heaney himself was very uncomfortable about being seen as a political poet, but he never denied politics; the barrier between the political and non-political has to be porous.

[marymck]

This means a lot to me. If it doesn't move you, then fine, just pass on by. But please don't trample it.

In the last minutes he said more to her
Almost than in all their life together.
'You'll be in New Row on Monday night
And I'll come up for you and you'll be glad
When I walk in the door ... Isn't that right?'
His head was bent down to her propped-up head.
She could not hear but we were overjoyed.
He called her good and girl. Then she was dead,
The searching for a pulsebeat was abandoned
And we all knew one thing by being there.
The space we stood around had been emptied
Into us to keep, it penetrated
Clearances that suddenly stood open.
High cries were felled and a pure change happened.

[Annie.]

Very moving Mary.

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[Robin Orton]

I agree. The last line moves into a different register and might meet Housman's shaving test. I think I know what 'high cries were felled' means!

In response to Tim's interesting point, I never like listening to other people reading poems, particularly ones I don't know. But this is perhaps because I'm basically a text person rather than a speech person. I prefer to read the poem silently on the page and then, when I've got an idea of what it's all about, and if I like it, I may read it aloud to myself. (At one time, if I really liked it, I'd try to memorize it, so that I could spout it out whenever I felt like it, often to the irritation of my nearest and dearest. In my view, that is really the only way of getting inside a poem and 'owning' it.) I feel that great poetry ought to 'work' whatever accent it is read in - even one's own internal voice, as it were.

Like Rod, I prefer Ted Hughes to Heaney. But I don't agree that great poetry cannot be political, or at any rate reflect political concerns. One of my favourites of all time is Yeats' 'Easter 1916' ('All changed, changed utterly/A terrible beauty is born.') And I love 'Absalom and Achitophel' and Ulysses' 'degree' speech from 'Troilus and Cressida' - both with strong political elements.

Why is this thread in the 'Town Hall', by the way?

[Tim Lund]

Why is this thread in the 'Town Hall', by the way?

Because Admin hasn't yet set up the Town Seminar Room.

[marymck]

It's on this forum, Robin, because I didn't know where else to put it. It didn't seem right in the cafe. I only wanted to express a sense of loss at the passing of someone who has meant a lot to me. I didn't expect it to become a sort of poetry criticism thread.

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