I was sad to read that Seamus Heaney died in Dublin in late August at
the age of 74. The passing of Ireland's greatest living writer and its
first Nobel prize-winning poet since Yeats is
a loss to us all. He was an author of 13 collections of poetry, 4 books of
criticism, two plays, and numerous translations (the highly acclaimed Beowulf in 2000 which was my first purchase), lectures, and other writings. Some of us learned of, Heaney when
he received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995.
You can see & hear his
modest Nobel Lecture
online. Known is the UK as “Seamus Famous“ he was a multi-talented
writer-translator- professor-broadcaster. According to one source in 2007, his
books accounted for 2/3rds of the poetry sales in the UK. Why? He was a clear, but hard edged, Humanist
voice. His was a Shakespeare-like mind that could creatively shape language to purposeful
use. Like “stoked up, stiff as a broom” from his early poem Lint Water.
His themes often drew from his father’s generation of farm life but he could re-frame even earlier classics, such as Dante’s Inferno, to provide
historical and cultural continuity to current times.
With his death many have spoken out on his impact. Irish American Joe Biden
put it this way quoting from a Heaney poem on the Irish problem:
"…. Heaney taught us that 'once in a lifetime, the longed-for
tidal wave of justice can rise up, and hope and history rhyme'. We have been
lucky in our lifetimes to see that tidal wave of justice rise and to find our
hopes reflected in historic moments of opportunity. But most of all, we were
lucky to have a poet with the grace of Seamus Heaney, whose simple, honest
wisdom could help us better understand ourselves and the world we inhabit. I am
sorry that we lost him, but grateful that his words will live on."
Seamus was beloved locally because he could
paint an Irish landscape in words. In The
Forge he hammers us with action words to give
us a clear picture of the life of a blacksmith he knew as a child and
adult. We see a creative, joyful process at seemingly simple action. But the totality of grunting skill forges
simple metals into refined art and useful tools.
All I know is a door into the dark.
Outside, old axles and iron hoops rusting;
Inside, the hammered anvil’s short-pitched ring,
The unpredictable fantail of sparks
Or hiss when a new shoe toughens in water.
The anvil must be somewhere in the centre,
Horned as a unicorn, at one end and square,
Set there immoveable: an altar
Where he expends himself in shape and music.
Sometimes, leather-aproned, hairs in his nose,
He leans out on the jamb, recalls a clatter
Of hoofs where traffic is flashing in rows;
Then grunts and goes in, with a slam and flick
To beat real iron out, to work the bellows.
Outside, old axles and iron hoops rusting;
Inside, the hammered anvil’s short-pitched ring,
The unpredictable fantail of sparks
Or hiss when a new shoe toughens in water.
The anvil must be somewhere in the centre,
Horned as a unicorn, at one end and square,
Set there immoveable: an altar
Where he expends himself in shape and music.
Sometimes, leather-aproned, hairs in his nose,
He leans out on the jamb, recalls a clatter
Of hoofs where traffic is flashing in rows;
Then grunts and goes in, with a slam and flick
To beat real iron out, to work the bellows.
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