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Religious
Themes in Leaving Certificate Poetry
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| Seamus Heaney | |
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Seamus Heaney (born 1939 ) is one of the best known living Irish poets. He was educated in St Columb's, a Catholic College and seminary in Northern Ireland, where his talent was recognised and encouraged by his teachers. He took part in Civil Rights campaigns in the North, and while his poetry shows a consciousness of the tensions between Catholic Nationalists and Protestant Loyalists in that context, much of his poetry is light, romantic, thoughtful and accessible. He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1995. Click here for a more detailed account of Heaney's life and work. |
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Click this link for the text of the poem |
| Love
seems to be the main theme here, though it is only later in the poem that
he puts a name on it ("mirrored clear in love's deep river"). But as self
forgetfulness (in the sense of putting another first) is at the heart
of love, this was signalled earlier. Does the poet admire the saint's
love of the bird, as suggested by the attractive nature imagery ("love's
deep river"), or does he think the saint has gone too far, loosing his
human consciousness and identity, becoming a "blank": "forgotten ... forgotten
... forgotten" and "Is there distance in his head?" Perhaps there's a
sense of liberation from the self, a movement beyond self spiritually
while ironically being physically rooted to the spot, like a tree that
the bird would normally rest in. There are also spiritual themes, but not separate from love. The poem is partly at least about prayer. It starts with Kevin saying his prayers, but apart from the words, which we are not given, posture is all important ("arms stretched out"); in fact, by the end it's not just that his body is praying, his body is a prayer ("a prayer his body makes entirely"). The imagery suggests a link between the sufferings of Kevin and the sufferings of Christ - "arms stretched out", "crossbeam", "agony". Another theme is the interconnectedness of life - no artificial division here between nature and religion: Kevin is "linked/Into the network of eternal life". The first section (4 verses) is largely descriptive - describing what allegedly happened to Kevin and how he responded to the event. The second section (also 4 verses) is more reflective - reflecting on the significance (creative, spiritual) of what happened. There is questioning, analysing ("Which is he?/Self-forgetful or in agony") going on here, and wisely or not the poet offers some answers ("he has forgotten self"). From the details in the first 4 verses we are inclined to think that this story is not meant to be taken as literally true (e.g. a bird nesting in a human hand until hatching time). Instead of therefore dismissing the story as falsehood the poet points out that this is a work of the imagination, and builds on this. As a creative person himself he is attracted to an imaginative creation like this story, but he goes a step further and draws the reader into the creative process ("Imagine being Kevin"), thus bringing us closer to the work of God. |
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Further
Activities
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Click here to see an icon of St. Kevin (note the blackbird in his hand!) and get some background information on the saint. Click here to see a painting of the events described in the poem. Click here for a guided meditation based on this poem. Assignement: Discuss what this poem has to say about the relationship between faith and creativity. |
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Click this link for the text of the poem |
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Now here's an odd one. If you thought the situation
in St Kevin and the Blackbird was weird, this is something else
- monks at prayer when suddenly a ship of some sort appears above them
(indoors!), its anchor gets caught in the altar rails and a crewman has
to climb down to release it. It just goes to show the playfulness of the
writer (a monk presumably) of these annals and indeed of Heaney who chooses
to write about it. But we wonder if there is a deeper meaning - what could it all symbolise? Some see the "crewman" as a Jesus figure: he comes down to join the humans to release us from our sins, but there are some details that work against this interpretation - the man gets a better reception than Jesus got - the abbot just wants to help him, the man seems helpless without human assistance, and it's more a case of this man being released from something than him releasing us. Modern teenagers, steeped in science fiction stories like The X-Files or Steven Spielberg's TV series Taken, might see the poem as referring to visits from aliens - the alien from the spaceship "can't bear our life here and will drown … unless we help him". The stranger then leaves with an impression of this world as "marvellous". Maybe there is something here about the love we should show to all strangers who find it difficult to cope in our culture, whether they choose to come here or get accidentally stranded like the strange crewman in this poem. As in St Kevin and the Blackbird, prayer is also a theme here, though less so. The monks are not so totally absorbed in prayer that they don't notice someone in need, so their prayer is practical, sensibly grounded. Mind you it would be hard not to notice a ship appearing above an altar in church!. |
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Further
Activities:
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Click here to hear Heaney reading the Lightenings sequence, including Lightenings viii Click here to see a picture of Clonmacnoise Assignment: Discuss how Heaney uses a bizarre situation to deal with some important life issues. |
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