#heaney

[whatareyoureallyafraidof]

  "I can't think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is they change people's understanding of what's going on in the world" - Seamus Heaney (died: 30 August 2013)

[blackswaneuroparedux]

What one learns ultimately from Eliot is that the activity of poetry is solitary and, if one is to rejoice in it, one has to construct something upon which to rejoice. One learns that at the desk every poet faces the same kind of task, that there is no secret that can be imparted, only resources of one’s own that are to be mustered, or not, as the case may be. Many of the things Eliot says about poetic composition are fortifying because they are so authoritatively unconsoling.

- Seamus Heaney

[imongouda]

Oysters

Our shells clacked on the plates. My tongue was a filling estuary, My palate hung with starlight: As I tasted the salty Pleiades Orion dipped his foot into the water.

Alive and violated They lay on their beds of ice: Bivalves: the split bulb And philandering sigh of ocean. Millions of them ripped and shucked and scattered.

We had driven to that coast Through flowers and limestone And there we were, toasting friendship, Laying down a perfect memory In the cool of thatch and crockery,

Over the Alps, packed deep in hay and snow, The Romans hauled their oysters south to Rome: I saw damp panniers disgorge The frond-lipped, brine-stung Glut of privilege,

And was angry that my trust could not repose In the clear light, like poetry or freedom Leaning in from sea. I ate the day Deliberately, that its tang Might quicken me all into verb, pure verb.

-from Field Work by Seamus Heaney

[saintless-star]

Need opinions of Black (queer?) ppl if possible! | Using "no justice, no peace" in my thesis?

I'm (white/22/enby) currently writing my thesis, and I'm doing an analysis of the Grendel episode in Beowulf from a queer perspective.

Grendel's queerness is relative to the homosocial norms of the world of Heorot, rather than in relation to the cis-heteronormativity we might think of today.

So like, Grendel being queer doesn't mean that he's necessarily LGBTQ+ in this context, he could be a racial minority, or a person with a disability, etc.

Looking at Fulk's and Heaney's translations made me think of the BLM movement's slogan "no justice, no peace", and I think it is an incredibly interesting analogue to Grendel's desires and actions.

He's a figure that has been cast out, his Otherness is 'naturalised', and he's doomed to suffer on the periphery just for being born as a descendent of Cain. So he wreaks havoc on the people of Heorot in retaliation, refusing to "parley or make peace with any Dane" (Heaney's translation, ll. 155).

TLDR; Basically what I'm wondering is whether using a comparison to the BLM slogan is in bad taste? I don't want to accidentally appropriate the slogan, even if I explicitly write that it is a BLM one.

I'd appreciate any thoughts from queer Black people in particular!! Thank you sm!!

[p-isforpoetry]

"The Underground" by Seamus Heaney (read by Andrew Scott)

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.

Source: BBC Radio 3 - Words And Music: Untitled, 9 June 2013

[thesquireofcheddar]

History says, Don't hope On this side of the grave, But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up And hope and history rhyme.

[ohappylivingthings]

I've been trying my hand at embroidery and I really like this attempt.

--

"The Apple Orchard" by Seamus Heaney

Come just after the sun has gone down, watch

This deepening of green in the evening sward:

Is it not as if we’d long since garnered

And stored within ourselves a something which

From feeling and from feeling recollected,

From new hope and half-forgotten joys

And from an inner dark infused with these,

Issues in thoughts as ripe as windfalls scattered

Under trees here like trees in a Dürer woodcut –

Pendent, pruned, the husbandry of years

Gravid in them until the fruit appears –

Ready to serve, replete with patience, rooted

In the knowledge that no matter how above

Measure or expectation, all must be

Harvested and yielded, when a long life willingly

Cleaves to what’s willed and grows in quiet resolve.

[wcterhouses]

- the grauballe man, seamus heaney