MP3: Seamus Heaney-Personal Helicon
Reading poetry can be a proper sweaty struggle. Especially when you are a young reader. Many of the poems I tackled as a youth left me feeling alienated and a bit dim. When your pre-frontal cortex is still forming away, a poem like T.S. Eliot's 'The Wasteland' is nothing short of an impenetrable castle made of solid ice encasing the murky forms of people who will always be 'smarter than you' moving around inside. It still mostly is, actually.
Thank God then for Heaney. Not just for his poems, but for his truthful prose that guides you into the daunting world of poetry, shining a light onto some of its more elusive creations. Here he is, writing about his own youthful struggles with Eliot's poems...
"later, during my first year at Queen's University, when I read in E.M Forster's 'Howard's End' an account of the character called Leonard Bast as somebody doomed forever to be familiar with the outsides of books, my identification was not with the privileged narrative voice but with Bast himself, pathetic scrambler on the edge of literacy."
It's comforting to read the likes of that from a Nobel Laureate. His prose collection 'Finders Keepers' makes brilliant and essential reading for anyone interested in a series of crystalline texts on the art of poetry. Like John Updike, another favourite writer of mine, Seamus Heaney is a wizard at making that which is initially obscure ring clear. His clarity of thought is a gift to readers. And his poems, of course, are wonderful.
Happy 70th Birthday.
4/15/09
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"I rhyme to see myself/ to set the darkness echoing"
Tupac couldn't have put it better himself.
MP3: Seamus Heaney-Personal Helicon
Reading poetry can be a proper sweaty struggle. Especially when you are a young reader. Many of the poems I tackled as a youth left me feeling alienated and a bit dim. When your pre-frontal cortex is still forming away, a poem like T.S. Eliot's 'The Wasteland' is nothing short of an impenetrable castle made of solid ice encasing the murky forms of people who will always be 'smarter than you' moving around inside. It still mostly is, actually.
Thank God then for Heaney. Not just for his poems, but for his truthful prose that guides you into the daunting world of poetry, shining a light onto some of its more elusive creations. Here he is, writing about his own youthful struggles with Eliot's poems...
"later, during my first year at Queen's University, when I read in E.M Forster's 'Howard's End' an account of the character called Leonard Bast as somebody doomed forever to be familiar with the outsides of books, my identification was not with the privileged narrative voice but with Bast himself, pathetic scrambler on the edge of literacy."
It's comforting to read the likes of that from a Nobel Laureate. His prose collection 'Finders Keepers' makes brilliant and essential reading for anyone interested in a series of crystalline texts on the art of poetry. Like John Updike, another favourite writer of mine, Seamus Heaney is a wizard at making that which is initially obscure ring clear. His clarity of thought is a gift to readers. And his poems, of course, are wonderful.
Happy 70th Birthday.
MP3: Seamus Heaney-Personal Helicon
Reading poetry can be a proper sweaty struggle. Especially when you are a young reader. Many of the poems I tackled as a youth left me feeling alienated and a bit dim. When your pre-frontal cortex is still forming away, a poem like T.S. Eliot's 'The Wasteland' is nothing short of an impenetrable castle made of solid ice encasing the murky forms of people who will always be 'smarter than you' moving around inside. It still mostly is, actually.
Thank God then for Heaney. Not just for his poems, but for his truthful prose that guides you into the daunting world of poetry, shining a light onto some of its more elusive creations. Here he is, writing about his own youthful struggles with Eliot's poems...
"later, during my first year at Queen's University, when I read in E.M Forster's 'Howard's End' an account of the character called Leonard Bast as somebody doomed forever to be familiar with the outsides of books, my identification was not with the privileged narrative voice but with Bast himself, pathetic scrambler on the edge of literacy."
It's comforting to read the likes of that from a Nobel Laureate. His prose collection 'Finders Keepers' makes brilliant and essential reading for anyone interested in a series of crystalline texts on the art of poetry. Like John Updike, another favourite writer of mine, Seamus Heaney is a wizard at making that which is initially obscure ring clear. His clarity of thought is a gift to readers. And his poems, of course, are wonderful.
Happy 70th Birthday.
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14 comments:
this.
(I see what you mean about The Waste Land, although I appreciate it more with age. In my opinion, Eliot's Four Quartets is the finest work in poetry.)
I have downloaded some readings of Eliot for listening over the coming days.
I have never read the four quartets, but have struggled with the wasteland, gained a certain understanding of the Hollow Men and love re-reading Prufrock (which is the poem of his that engages me most) and Ash Wednesday.
Heaney said the Wasteland came to him with age. I love that idea of poets holding verbal passwords to those complex and seemingly indescribable matrices of our inner life which reveal themselves to us at different stages of our span.
Words from the leaving cert syllabus which meant little to me at the time, now often float unannounced into my head at appropriate moments and click.
There is a lot to be said for learning poetry by rote. That slim syllabus continues to teach me more than I ever guessed it would at the time.
I concur re. L.C. syllabus - although Austin Clarke was a talentless arse and I never understood why his bilge was on the syllabus. It's funny, on reflection, how we stumbled through so-called "criticism" at the time - bullet-points detailing what, according to some dolt, the poet meant by such-and-such a phrase in such-and-such a context. Themes delineated, metaphors crudely dismantled - all with the precision of a gorilla swinging a meat cleaver at an autopsy. There's a metaphor, innit.
The words were nailgunned into some recess in the brain, just words - the meaning couldn't possibly stick, given the pervading atmosphere of exam panic - and they only came unstuck when the dust had settled.
I loved Kinsella back then; his aesthetic was and is a major influence. He just towers above most modern poets. I'd like to carry the torch in some way, if that's not too presumptuous. Actually, to hell with it, I have to aim for something.
Prufrock is just ridiculously good, though, isn't it? His attitude towards it in later years is so typical of genius; to people like him, their early works were formative and no more. I've heard Tangerine Dream members say they prefer 1975's Rubycon to 1974's Phaedra. I mean, what? It's often the same with a great young director or actor - you'll discover an early masterpiece which they wore like a shining mantle, only to be confronted on a lazy channel-hop years later with some soulless horseshit with their names attached. I swear, people have no idea when they're making something worthwhile. (At least Radiohead have admitted they haven't a clue which songs to release as singles.) Sometimes, I feel like grabbing these fools by the collar and shaking some sense into them:
"Just stop it already! Let's go back to what you did 15 years ago and take a good look at it."
Either they're being disingenuous or they truly lost the run of themselves in the intervening years.
Stephen Fry wrote about how he knew his adult self would betray the principles his teenage self knew, with absolute conviction, to be right and true. Thinking about Kinsella and Prufrock, I'd have to agree.
People too often confuse change with progress.
Sorry for the massive comment Darragh!
The problem with so much poetry, contemporary or otherwise is that it's either far too cryptic or overly verbose. This is definitely something to do with age, and often, life experience. As you say Darragh, poetry is often wasted on youth when it can seem impenetrable, leaving a young reader at arms length. Regardless of what age you are when you read 'Mid-term Break', you can't help but feel the weight of emotion in every line - and as for the ending...
Heaney is wonderful story-teller - he just happens to do it with metre and rhyme. You come away from it the way you do a great short story or novel, not scratching your head wondering what you've just read.
Re the Leaving Cert syllabus. Our poetry book was Soundings, edited by Gus Marting. He later lectured me in UCD and while he was a very knowledgable man, the lectures were dry and passionless. A bit like the collection itself. At the time I couldn't bear work like Dryden's Absolom and Achitophel, but maybe I should return to it now.
The scope of the book, for the syllabus, was very limited. Apart from the fact that there was only one female poet in it (Emily Dickinson), there were just four Irish poets featured. Although it fostered a lifelong love of Kavanagh and Yeats.
You've made me want to dig it out all the same!
College opened my mind to poetry I never knew existed, Ginsberg,Ezra Pound and the like.
Ultimately though, I have always loved the old war poets, Sassoon and Owen, even though I have no frame of reference for their subject matter, I just find their stuff heart-breaking, esp. Owen. And thanks to the LC, Paradise Lost will always hold a dear place in my heart...so many months studying it thanks to an obsessive English teacher.
Spending warm summer days inside, writing frightening prose, to a buck-tooth girl in Luxembourg.
@Ape-I am one of the lucky students who managed to avoid the whole bullet point approach thanks to a genuinely engaged teacher who was more concerned with sharing his love of English than clocking up a few CAO points. Because of this some of the more rigidly minded students moaned about his teaching methods; something that pissed me off.
RE: carrying the torch. I know you write poetry. Would you ever consider publishing it on your blog?
@ Sinéad yes, certain work, brilliant as it surely is, is just not right for that age group. People grow into poetry and a 17 year old is going to get a lot more food for thought from the likes of 'A kite for Michael and Christopher' than 'The Rape of the Lock'. I have no idea what the syllabus is like now though, so perhaps this issue doesn't exist anymore.
@Adam because I didn't study english my further introduction to poetry came through the Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes edited anthology 'The School Bag'. It's a book I would surely take to a desert island with me.
@Storkboy "frightening prose"? I never knew that lyric was about someone writing ghost stories!
I'm currently halfway through Dennis O'Driscoll's 'Stepping Stones' interviews with Heaney and really enjoying it, highly recommended. So often these days I hear or read an interview ruined by poor questions rather than poor answers, O'Driscoll's skillful approach to his subject is a real tonic.
Coincidentally I also was lucky enough to have had a passionate and broad minded English teacher during secondary school, although only until Junior Cert. Still, that was long enough to foment a permanent awe for literature.
My English teacher was shite. Favoured hackneyed tripe over fresh, resonant work every time. Hadn't a clue, I reckon. I'd regularly try to engage him (and others) on the subject of poetry and it was plain to see I had a far greater interest in it than those around me, including the gombeen in charge. I always gobbled up literature but clearly I was barking up the wrong tree back then. Bunch of wasters.
I bought some Dana Gioia volumes when I was 14 - An Introduction To Poetry or the 20th Century American Anthology. Excellent. The Rattle Bag was great as well.
Darragh - me post poetry of my own? Heavens no! It wouldn't be appropriate to use the blog for that - it'd be like an 18th-century MySpace.
Haven't written any in about 8 years actually. Should dig out some of it for a chuckle. I did write what you could call a children's poem, kind of in the style of Edward Lear, or Hilaire Belloc without the cautionary tale element, and I'm proud of it. (Can't say the same for the rest of the muck I wrote.) I'm trying to get it permanently displayed in a museum, believe it or not! Not as mental as it sounds... will explain later and keep you posted on how it works out.
Who the heck told you I wrote poetry anyway? Someone hates me...
I'm popeye the sailor man
I live in a pot of jam
the jam is so sticky
it sticks to my micky
I'm popeye the sailor man
poot poot
Oh Steven Patrick Storkboy, I prefer your early stuff.
Reading Poetry Can Be a Proper Sweaty Struggle
A sweaty pugilistic struggle:
Tis this that poetry has always been;
To exercise that proper muscle in the skull
On words that others penned;
To fairly pop the witless pupils
In a reader's stalwart witness -
Tis this that wrecks the feckless
Student's eyes to make him soon
Request appointment for a brand new lens
And rue the day he set aside
Less ardent plans to grapple with the Muse
Of other men's.
Copyright 2009 Percy Bisque Silley, All Rights of Reproduction Now Known and Ever to Be Devised by Humankind or Aliens Reserved. Patent Pending. May Not Be Photocopied by Teachers for Educational Purposes. Offer Void where Prohibited.
Cahony, check out some of Dennis O'Driscoll's own poetry. Definitely one of Ireland's finest contemporary poets.
I love his list poem, 'Someone'.
http://dennisodriscoll.com/poetry/someone
The line "someone’s coffin is being sanded, laminated, shined" never fails to make me shudder.
@Cahony- Are you THE Cahony? I mean to read that book soon.
@Ape I knew you wrote poems 'cos you told me way back in a previous life when we were changing the sheets of American students in trinity halls.
@Sinéad I'm going to take that heads up too. thanks.
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