Heaney the Irish Orpheus

I have read this poem before and studied it, line by line, looking at how it works and I have returned to it many times following. His abilities as a lyric poet are fully displayed in this poem, The Underground. And there is not a line I would alter. For two sentences, for that is what the poem consists of, he creates a lyric that when read aloud, is intense and very oral and recalls the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.

                        There we were in the vaulted tunnel running,

                        You in your going-away coat speeding ahead

                        And me, me then like a fleet god gaining

                        Behind you before you turned to a reed

                        Or some new white flower japped with crimson

                        As the coat flapped wild and button after button

                        Sprang off and fell in a trail

                        Between the Underground and the Albert Hall.

                        Honeymooning, mooning around, late for the Proms,

                        Our echoes die in that corridor and now

                        I come as Hansel came on the moonlit stones

                        Retracing the path back, lifting the buttons

                        To end up in a draughty lamplit station

                        After the trains have gone, the wet track

                        Bared and tensed as I am, all attention

                        For your step following and damned if I look back.

            First off, the beat of the lines echoes the idea. That vaulted tunnel running is so certain, so subterranean, the vowel sounds in the first half of each word, vau, tun and run are heavy and they dominate the line with their guttural, underground and netherworld sounding quality. The opening line also has the implication and action of being propelled forward, the pace and action getting the poem going, or rather, thrusting the poem forward with its restless diction. Then Heaney’s craft continues in the second line - You in your going-away coat speeding ahead. The y’s anchor the line in musical flourish. The rest of the stanza fits neatly and follows in the unstoppable diction. The first sentence runs throughout the first two stanzas, while the second covers the second half of the poem.

            We are taken underground (we cannot hold back, the poet is too strong) with him and this other person, a woman, on what is an Orphic journey. In the first and second lines of the second stanza, japped and flapped play into each other, also giving the impression of whatever is occurring is happening with such an intensity; and one can hear the words japped and flapped clearly.

            The poem takes a turn at the beginning of the third stanza and this turn, or pause, or even quick stop, like that of an Amtrak, is reflected in the language: Between the Underground and the Albert Hall - stop, get off the train, or step quickly on the platform and hurry back on in under a second - Honeymooning, mooning around, late for the Proms . . . We’re off. And the language is playful. Again, here we have the same vowel dominance as that in the first line. I have indicated only the strong vowels, the oo’s and roun and rom. This time, however, we are not propelled as in the poem’s first line, but held back a bit, yet not restrained. We breathe. The train slowing down, maybe coming to a halt. Then we gain our breath and strength to continue, but slower. The diction works like a speed bump or speed caution slowing the speed that was contained and let loose and used to its fullest in the first two stanzas, implying even a stopping, intimated by the next line, Our echoes die in that corridor, but we do not stop, instead we move with and now, which is emphasized, kind of a gearing up for more, going into the next line, I come as Hansel came on the moonlit stones/Retracing the path back . . . That third line indicates ascendancy and must be read with the same ascending tone in the voice.

            So the language ascends with the imagery of the poet coming up from the subterranean halls of the Underground, as if after his descent into Hades for his Eurydice. He does not trust that she is with him, but he dare not look back or he’ll be damned to loneliness as she fades off, just like in the myth. He feels lost, and must retrace his tracks, maybe even to the beginning of the poem. The trains are gone, the tracks are wet and empty, that lonely feeling in a major urban metropolis, the dampness all around. He is tense.

            The action and speed in this poem has ceased. He is not moving and cannot move. We are above ground, but lost. To end up states the new surroundings and direction that must be taken, alone. The final word in the poem is back, ending the phrase I look back, which points us to his Retracing the path back at the end of the third stanza, but more importantly, to the opening line of the poem, back into the tunnel and all that occurred in it.

            The first two stanzas consist of we, the poet and his Eurydice and the reader/s, but in the last two stanzas, there is only the solitary I of the poet left alone. There is allusion, however, to the other with your step following, his Eurydice and the reader/s. Then the poem is finished in a tone not of regret and disappointment. 

Heaney's "The Hermit"

It is a healthy poem, Seamus Heaney’s The Hermit, its lines looking so clean on the white page, its paper a clever thickness, and the lines perfectly arranged. The line breaks have been sculpted very well, displaying the poet’s craftsmanship, his instinct that instructs him on how far he should go, and it is as if he is seeing those markings in the earth that he recalls making with friends to play football in the poem Markings. There is no superfluity at all in this poem, all the unnecessary words sculpted off and thrown away.

                        

                        As he prowled the rim of his clearing

                        where the blade of choice had not spared

                        one stump of affection

                        he was like a ploughshare

                        interred to sustain the whole field

                        of force, from the bitted

                        and high-drawn sideways curve

                        of the horse’s neck to the aim

                        held fast in the wrists and elbows -

                        the more brutal the pull

                        and the drive, the deeper

                        and quieter the work of refreshment.

            A simple poem, yes, and it is, but it is not one of those little ditties that is second-rate and was published in a book to make the page-count more. It is the act of poetry, the raw act of writing poetry that the poet has so illuminatingly captured. The poet himself is the hermit, for poetry is the most solitary endeavor. The aim that his body works towards through his elbow and wrist (singular here in prose study) is the poem. The tougher the fight for the right words and the right structure means the more satisfied and fulfilled in himself is the poet in the aftermath of this fight, for that is what it is, the act of writing poetry - it is a fight to let the poem win, a fight in which the poet surrenders; but it is a loss of the ego in submission to the poem; to push it, i.e. the poem, until it takes its own course. There is the biblical comparison of Jacob and the Angel of the Lord in Genesis 32:24-32. The Angel must win; and like that earlier wrestler this contemporary poet is wrestling with the poem, all of this history buried behind the simple lines and imagery of agrarian life. This loss of the ego is also reminiscent of Christ’s teaching that in order to gain his life a man must lose his life. In this fight, though, it is what will make the man.

            The lines read in smooth diction. We have an early prompt in prowled that pushes us through the rest of the first stanza without a break, pausing slightly only to observe the line-breaks, and then we continue until the first real pause appears at the end of the first stanza. We come upon stump of affection and it is the stump itself that stops us, the hardness and softness of the phrase with the stump sticking out above the smooth, flat earth of the poem; but the bluntness is alleviated by the affection that follows. Poetry, that is what it is, especially in this poem, the both hard, blunt and soft, not effeminate, but manly, affection, like that in the friendship between David and Jonathan. And it is this affection that lifts us into the next stanza.

            We drive further into the poem, ploughing our way along with the poet and the hermit, both the same person, and we are fully into it, as indicated by interred in the second line of the second stanza, not directly in the middle of the poem, but driving to the center, so we are acting out the word and driving to the center of the poem and deeper into it. It is a clever trick to put that word where it is and at the beginning of the line. But look at the whole line itself, interred to sustain the whole field, listen to its diction, how it reads, and its vowels. Again, that first word and what it does to the reader is pure elation, for it allows us to bury ourselves in the language in the line, and the imitation of the line is one of going within what we are doing and within ourselves at that moment to sustain, scuplt and bring together, and holding fast everything that we are pulling at for some result.

            This is followed by the elegant change in imagery and sound of the language: and high-drawn sideways curve/of the horse’s neck . . . The wild, beautiful sideways curve of the horse’s neck and the hermit’s/poet’s body in conjunction, yet not altogether in agreement, for the horse possesses his own force, though domesticated he may be (or become). The line itself reads wonderfully off the tongue, the voice lifting into a lilt and the action of the mouth and the lips are dictated by the line and everything in and about it. It is a precise and accurate line drawing, reflected by the end of the line with to the aim. Here we feel the poem tightening as the fist of the poet does, as he grows more deliberate and intense in his experience of the poem. And then, recognition and exhilaration.

            The poem is one sentence. In the last stanza the poet pulls everything together. We read of his confirmation in his labour. And we read the final stanza in a deeper, more trying voice and breath. Yet, he does not indicate any success. This is the farmer working hard and not always assured of harvest, for anything can happen in nature. The poet might fail in this specific endeavour on this specific day, but he does not admit to a sense of defeat, or failure. The real satisfaction and sense of fulfillment derive from the honest physical labour that the poet/hermit has done. The deep and quiet sense of fulfillment, the elation that comes only from such labour is one that the poet/hermit and any worker who has given his all, when he is in, as they say, his zone, can know and relax in. It is the elation after hard work that Robert Lowell knew and wrote about and that the reader can come to know through a close and solitary reading of the poem.