Seamus Heaney

In “Punishment," Seamus Heaney shows us the universality of violence, especially violence towards women, throughout human history. As presented in the poem, violence against women is used as a way...

The theme of Heaney's poem is that life in all its fullness, as represented by the blackberries, is transitory and can only be grasped for a fleeting moment; afterwards it rots. In the first...

Seamus Heaney's poem, "Digging," has a single central conceit (extended metaphor), which presents an analogy comparing the poet's pen to the spade of his father and grandfather. This comparison...

In Seamus Heaney's poem "Digging," the speaker describes his ancestors' digging using imagery and considers his own writing as his form of "digging." The speaker begins by referencing a more...

Many typical traits of the poetry of Seamus Heaney are visible in the following stanza from one of his most famous poems, titled “Digging.” My grandfather cut more turf in a day Than any other man...

"Punishment" is based on an actual event in 1951 when the body of a young woman was found in a bog in Windeby, Germany. The girl lived in the first century A.D. According to the Roman scholar...

Seamus Heaney's poem "At a Potato Digging," features two contrasting depictions of a potato harvest. In the first section of the poem, the speaker describes a modern potato harvest with "a...

In "Punishment," Heaney is describing a "bog woman," a woman who was punished and killed, later to be thrown in a bog. This was a common practice of ancient tribes; bogs were also used for ritual...

In his poem "Punishment," Seamus Heaney" writes of the crimes of the Irish Republican Army against British sympathizers in Ulster. He points to the "intimate revenge" and cruelty of the IRA to...

Seamus Heaney's "Digging" describes a man's journey through time to observe, stand in awe of, and struggle to measure up to, the greatness of two men in the speaker's past. First the narrator talks...

The theme of Seamus Heaney’s poem, “Mossbawn: Sunlight”, appears to be the love between mother and child, depicted in the familiar scone-baking activity. Although there is a “sunlit absence”,...

Seamus Heaney’s poem “Funeral Rites” emphasizes social awareness, especially in its overt references to the violent "Troubles” between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. Each section,...

In “Casualty,” Seamus Heaney uses body imagery to establish the character of the fisherman; the poet presents water imagery to illustrate the man’s ties to fishing and drinking. The repeated water...

Seamus Heaney uses both middle and poetic diction in the poem “Digging” to make its meaning accessible and straightforward to readers. Middle diction is the use of words that are chosen to be more...

Seamus Heaney's "After a Killing" is a poem about the Irish Troubles. Heaney uses symbols and imagery to emphasize not only the struggles of the people, but the inevitability of trouble returning...

The tone of this poem is one of sombre sadness and grief at the suffering that was enacted upon this bog girl that was discovered, but also how that suffering is continued in today's age through...

Of the Seamus Heaney poems I have read about his father, this is one that makes me sad. It is obvious from all of Heaney's poetry that he loved and admired his dad, but this poem, "Follower,"...

In his own words, Heaney describes his poem, "Punishment": It’s a poem about standing by as the IRA tar and feather these young women in Ulster. But it’s also about standing by as the British...

Heaney's central point in the lecture is that it is possible for poetry to to be "equal to" and "true," to be what he describes as a "retuning of the world." He develops this idea in the context of...

Seamus Heaney’s poem titled “Funeral Rites” effectively uses a variety of literary devices in a number of different ways, including the following: Effective metaphors, as in the word “shouldered”...

[Continued from above.] Lines 18-19 display a kind of internal rhyme, since both “me” and the last syllable of “epiphany” are accented, thus contributing in yet another way to the sheer music of...

The best answer to this question is that Heaney uses middle diction in this poem, as he does in the majority of his poems. The word choice employed in this poem is definitely not formal, as the...

"At a Potato Digging" is written from third-person perspective - someone uninvolved with the action is describing what is happening. A mechanized digging machine is unearthing potatoes, which human...

Heaney explicitly called the Glanmore Sonnets his “marriage poems,” but in the broadest sense they refer not only to the union between the poet and his wife but also to his acceptance of art as a...

The diction used in this powerful poem which links the bog people discovered in Ireland to modern day political tragedies is carefully selected to reinforce the horror of what the young girl found...

This beautiful poem by Seamus Heaney is, as the title indicates, an elegy, a poem of lament. Traditionally, an elegy contains three sections: an expression of grief, an expression of praise for the...

Like many poems by Heaney, this poem is rich with imagery, and uses that imagery to make evocative observations about the world in which people live. As far as how we can analyze it, start by...

Before you can write your letter, you'll first want to do a very close, analytical reading of some of Seamus Heaney's poems you read in class. I would pick two or three of your favorites and focus...

Seamus Heaney is an Irishman who grew up on a farm and became a poet who often wrote about the things he knew best. "Cow in Calf" is an example of his experience with the intimate workings of farm...

"Requiem for the Croppies" is a tribute to the Irish rebels who fought against British domination of Ireland in 1798. "Croppies" were given their name because they wore their hair closely cropped...

At first blush, Seamus Heaney's "Blackberry-Picking" seems straightforward. As the title suggests, the poem is a nostalgic remembrance of the subject's youth, which he spent as a boy picking...

“Mossbawn: Sunlight” by Seamus Heaney presents an imagery of intimacy with the woman making the scones, heating the griddle, and keeping a watchful eye on their baking progress. Despite the...

As is well-known, Seamus Heaney originally intended that his next collection of poem would be titled after a line from the poem “The Tollund Man”: Wintering Seeds. The period is the early 1970s,...

“Digging” and “Casualty” are both poems that grapple with the nature of the conflict, in particular the conflict in Northern Ireland. “Digging” focuses more on intergenerational struggle, as the...

Both poems deal with Heaney's mother who is deceased. Sonnet one and three are very different pieces, and though both are set in the past, the first deals with the distant past and how the author...

In Seamus Heaney's poem 'Wedding Day' it may be the readers' romantic expectations of the marriage theme that are subverted but not those of the bridegroom, bride or family. The poet may be trying...

Seamus Heaney's "Blackberry-Picking" suggests that life's cycles are both beautiful and ugly, renewing and disappointing. Above all, people have no control over the natural order, no matter how...

What makes this Nobel Prizewinning author, now sadly no longer with us, so special, is the way that he takes scenes based on his childhood in Ireland and imbues them with such familiarity, but then...

In Seamus Heaney's poetry, it seems that the past fascinates him because he cannot deny the profound effect things of the past have had—and still have—on him. In "Digging," the narrator recalls his...

Let us just remember the overall context of this poem. It begins by describing the way in which a woman was punished by death for committing adultery in her time period. The corpse of this woman...

While social concerns appear in some of Seamus Heaney’s poems, such concerns are not as strongly emphasized as they are in the works of various other poets. Indeed, Heaney has been criticized for...

Good point! :-)

The overall tone of the poem is serious, harsh, even grim. The figure of the docker is central, and any other people are peripheral. The primary device that Seam Heaney uses is description. He...

In the first stanza of “Limbo” the apparently calm tone in which the fishermen’s grisly catch is revealed is undercut by the consonance of the stuttering “n” sounds which convey at least negation,...

Subject matter of a poem, or the theme, can differ based upon an individual reader's interpretation. That said, most critics, teachers, and students tend to agree when a universal theme is...

Seamus Heaney’s poem titled “Bog Oak” employs a number of poetic techniques and devices in support of its themes and meanings. Among those techniques are the following: Lines 1-28: the poem is...

As The Burial at Thebes opens, Antigone is telling her sister, Ismene, that Creon has prohibited anyone from burying their brother Polyneices. Expressing her concern that Polyneices will be...

Summarizing the Dedicatory Verse in Heaney's Wintering Out, his third published poetry collection, works better if you start from the end then go back to the beginning. The little destinies that...

In this poem, an adult world is seen through a child's perspective, full of the possibilities of imagination. The speaker travels with a group, noted by the plural first person used throughout the...

Seamus Heaney is an Irish poet who writes in English. His first poetry collection, Death of a Naturalist, was published in 1966. Since then, over more than fifty years, he has produced a...