Seamus Heaney

In his poem “The Otter,” Seamus Heaney uses the otter as a conceit, which is an extended metaphor that compares two quite dissimilar things in creative and sometimes shocking ways. In this poem,...

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...

"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...

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...

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’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 "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...

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...

Poetry is a literary form that enhances meaning through the use of literary devices. A word in a poem may be connected to other words not just through the standard grammar of English but also...

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...

An analysis of ten poems is rather a lot to ask for in one question, but I shall offer you an analysis of the first five sonnets in the sequence, and hopefully from this analysis you will be able...

"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...

Seamus Heaney’s "Feeling into Words" is as much a meditation on the craft of writing in and of itself as it is an autobiographical account of Heaney’s early and later days of writing. The idea of...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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,"...

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...

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”,...

"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...

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...

"Follower," by Seamus Heaney, is a poem comprising six stanzas of four lines each. It is written with an ABAB rhyme scheme. The conversational rhythm of the poem is in keeping with its theme: an...

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,...

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...

Good point! :-)

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...

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...

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...

[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...

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...

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...

“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...

“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...

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...

Heritage is one of Heaney's major themes across his body of work. The theme of heritage is taken up with irony and complexity in "The First Kingdom" as the poem draws an extended metaphor comparing...

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...

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...

In "Limbo" and "Two Lorries," Seamus Heaney shows how women are often dehumanized by the culture in which they live, utilizing literary techniques such as metaphor, imagery, enjambment, and...

The Irish poet Seamus Heaney (author of collections such as Death of a Naturalist and District and Circle) has recently edited a collection of various poems/poets in a book called 'The Redress of...

One way the role of women is diminished is by creating a voyeuristic spectacle of the female body. In recognizing that a young woman has lost her life, the speaker becomes hyper-focused on her...

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”...

To a large extent, the literary movement known as modernism emerged in response to the instability and fragmentation of cultural life in the wake of the First World War. The War had undermined many...

The dehumanization of women is shown in Seamus Heaney’s “Punishment” through poetic and literary devices that include imagery, metaphor, and alliteration. The poem presents the speaker’s...

In "Punishment," as elsewhere in his work, Heaney utilizes the modernist technique of stream of consciousness. As the poem revolves around the speaker's subjective feelings, his inner life, and his...

As with many of Seamus Heaney's poems, “At a Potato Digging” deals with the perennial relationship between man and the land. In the environment in which Heaney grew up, this relationship was...