Seamus Heaneys Poems Essay -- Seamus Heaney Poetry Poets Essays

Seamus Heaneys PoemsHeaney was born on April 13 1939. He was the first of golf club children.In modern day society it is common to sport 2 or 3 children, and tohave eight or nine children is considered very bizarre. Heaney harpdon the family farm, Mossbawn, about thirty miles northwest of Belfast,in County Derry. The bulk of UK residents live in urban argonas, anda small minority live in rural areas. It used to be more popular inthe past tense to live in a rural area. People in rural areas live, and havelived, in a totally incompatible civilisation to that of the people in urban,industrialized areas. Heaney is Irish, which is also another(prenominal) cultureto that of the English, today. The scrap in Northern Ireland isalmost always a backdrop to his work, tell or implicit.Heaneys Poems are based on real life experiences, which stool be colligate to in only so many a(prenominal) ways, because of the differences inlifestyle, culture etc. For example in Blackberry Picking, he istalking of woof berries as a boy, and then hoarding them until theyrot. This may imply that he went berry picking just for the fun of it,but today it is unusual for children to go berry picking, let alonewithout an adult. The adult would have know to store the berriesproperly, but in Heaneys day berry picking was a ritual for childrenonly.To my knowledge, the majority of Heaneys poems were written/published between 1960 and 1990, though many of the poems refer to hischildhood in the 1940s. Therefore, even though he is authorship from achilds perspective, he has the understanding of an adult. He is alsoable to pull away events in more detail. Many of the poems I have readare about his parents or major events in his childhood, e.g.Foll... ...e poems are writtenspecifically about his childhood, and the third one links in. Theytell of his loss of innocence, The earlyish Purges tells us of his lossof sentimentality, loss of idealism as he grows up bloody pups,Blackberry Pickin g tells us of his loss of optimism and idealism each year I hoped knew they would notThe past is another country and they do things differently thereThis is a very professedly phrase. Heaneys has a very different past fromus. Therefore, his poems even though some(a) have been written fairlyrecently, can only be related to in context. People living an urbanlife and childhood, would have very different views on life and death,than Heaney does in his poems. The past is certainly another country,they didnt have the technology that we have today. And foreigncountries also have different ways of living than we do.