Seamus Heaney dies

[HarmonicGenerator]

The news came out today that Seamus Heaney, who I'd say is probably one of the most well-known post-WW2 poets, has died. Great shame, because when he was on form, he was outstanding.

 

I have no idea what the wrestling fan/poetry reader overlap level is anymore - we did have a Poetry thread once, didn't we? - but maybe a few people on here are familiar with Heaney. I remember his translation of Beowulf from studying it at uni, and it was a fantastic translation of a poem that can, in the wrong hands, be a bit of a slog. And I'll never forget the first time I read 'Mid-Term Break', which stopped me in my tracks like a punch to the stomach.

 

 

I sat all morning in the college sick bay

Counting bells knelling classes to a close.

At two o'clock our neighbors drove me home.

 

In the porch I met my father crying--

He had always taken funerals in his stride--

And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

 

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram

When I came in, and I was embarrassed

By old men standing up to shake my hand

 

And tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble,'

Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,

Away at school, as my mother held my hand

 

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.

At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived

With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

 

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops

And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him

For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

 

Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,

He lay in the four foot box as in his cot.

No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

 

A four foot box, a foot for every year.

 

 

'Favourite's not the right word, but every time I read that it has a physical effect on me. Chills.

 

Anyone else have any particular Heaney poems to share?

[Maverick]

I attended the same school as he and the fact we were forced to endlessly study his poetry did not indere it to me. Saying that he is very well respected having won the noble prize and was a good statesman, when he was about the school he seemed a very nice bloke and that poem HG posted about the death of his young brother is certainly touching RIP.

[Onyx2]

Definitely did one of his poems for my English Lit GCSE. Something to do with an old geezer stinking of peppermint and tobacco.

[King Pitcos]

His dad had a shovel and he had a pen. What was that one called?

[Thunderplex]

The news came out today that Seamus Heaney, who I'd say is probably one of the most well-known post-WW2 poets, has died. Great shame, because when he was on form, he was outstanding.

 

I have no idea what the wrestling fan/poetry reader overlap level is anymore - we did have a Poetry thread once, didn't we? - but maybe a few people on here are familiar with Heaney. I remember his translation of Beowulf from studying it at uni, and it was a fantastic translation of a poem that can, in the wrong hands, be a bit of a slog. And I'll never forget the first time I read 'Mid-Term Break', which stopped me in my tracks like a punch to the stomach.

 

 

I sat all morning in the college sick bay

Counting bells knelling classes to a close.

At two o'clock our neighbors drove me home.

 

In the porch I met my father crying--

He had always taken funerals in his stride--

And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

 

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram

When I came in, and I was embarrassed

By old men standing up to shake my hand

 

And tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble,'

Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,

Away at school, as my mother held my hand

 

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.

At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived

With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

 

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops

And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him

For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

 

Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,

He lay in the four foot box as in his cot.

No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

 

A four foot box, a foot for every year.

 

 

'Favourite's not the right word, but every time I read that it has a physical effect on me. Chills.

 

Anyone else have any particular Heaney poems to share?

 

Never heard of him to be honest, but fuck me, that was powerful.

[PowerButchi]

I'd always assumed he'd died already, to be honest.

[Maverick]

He was only 74! He's been ill for a few years though, had a stroke awhile back and released a really nice collection on the subject on getting old/being incapacitated.

[DCW]

Remember having to learn 'A Constable Calls' off by heart for the Junior Cert,much prefered W.B. Yeats 'The Lake Isle of Inisfree' mainly because it wasn't terribly depressing.

[Arch Stanton]

I remember studying this one at school...

 

Follower

 

My father worked with a horse-plough,

His shoulders globed like a full sail strung

Between the shafts and the furrow.

The horse strained at his clicking tongue.

 

An expert. He would set the wing

And fit the bright steel-pointed sock.

The sod rolled over without breaking.

At the headrig, with a single pluck

 

Of reins, the sweating team turned round

And back into the land. His eye

Narrowed and angled at the ground,

Mapping the furrow exactly.

 

I stumbled in his hob-nailed wake,

Fell sometimes on the polished sod;

Sometimes he rode me on his back

Dipping and rising to his plod.

 

I wanted to grow up and plough,

To close one eye, stiffen my arm.

All I ever did was follow

In his broad shadow round the farm.

 

I was a nuisance, tripping, falling,

Yapping always. But today

It is my father who keeps stumbling

Behind me, and will not go away.

 

Was never big on poetry, but that one stuck with me.

 

I assumed he was long dead too, in all honesty.

[King Pitcos]

Gary Lightbody wrote a blog about him.

 

http://icanhover.tumblr.com/

[Teedy Kay]

I also had to study Heaney, always preferred Ted Hughes but loved Seamus. He also went up in my estimations when he told the queen to fuck off and turned down Poet Laureate.