Current mood:

contemplative

Stealing a line from the choucroute playbook
So I have an essay assignment and I thought I'd post a little something here and try to come up with an idea or two in that way. So basically the assignment is supposed to come to a conclusion about what I think the violence that is being portrayed in a few poems is operating as. The poet is Seamus Heaney and the violence is in Northern Ireland... which if you've never heard of Seamus Heaney the short version is people split over whether he's reflecting real life as he sees it or his ritualized treatment of the violence is elevating it to some other place.

So I guess I'll post the two poems that I was thinking of using, the first one is from his first collection of poems. The second is from the collection that got him into trouble with people leveling the accusations of him trying to imbue senseless violence with some sort of reason. Anyways, the poems are kind of long so they are under a cut ... that's about it and I guess we see what you guys think if that's alright? :P


Death of a Naturalist

All year the flax-dam festered in the heart
Of the townland; green and heavy headed
Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods.
Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun.
Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles
Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell.
There were dragon-flies, spotted butterflies,
But best of all was the warm thick slobber
Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water
In the shade of the banks. Here, every spring
I would fill jampotfuls of jellied
Specks to range on window-sills at home,
On shelves at school, and wait and watch until
The fattening dots burst into nimble-
Swimming tadpoles. Miss Walls would tell us how
The daddy frog was called a bullfrog
And how he croaked and how the mammy frog
Laid hundreds of little eggs and this was
Frogspawn. You could tell the weather by frogs too
For they were yellow in the sun and brown
In rain.

Then one hot day when fields were rank
With cowdung in the grass and angry frogs
Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedges
To a coarse croaking that I had not heard
Before. The air was thick with a bass chorus.
Right down the damn gross-bellied frogs were cocked
On sods; their loose necks pulsed like sails. Some
hopped:
The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat
Poised like mud grenades, their blunt head farting.
I sickened, turned and ran. The great slime kings
Were gathered there for vengeance and I knew
That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.

--Second poem
Punishment

I can feel the tug
of the halter at the nape
of her neck, the wind
on her naked front.

It blows her nipples
to amber beads,
it shakes the frail rigging
of her ribs.

I can see her drowned
body in the bog,
the weighing stone,
the floating rods and boughs.

Under which at first
she was a barked sapling
that is dug up
oak-bone, brain-firkin:

her shaved head
like a stubble of black corn,
her blindfold a soiled bandage,
her noose a ring

to store
the memories of love
Little adulteress,
before they punished you

you were flaxen-haired,
undernourished, and your
tar-black face was beautiful.
My poor scapegoat,

I almost love you
but would have cast, I know,
the stones of silence.
I am the artful voyeur

of your brain's exposed
and darkened combs,
your muscles' webbing
and all your numbered bones:

I who have stood dumb
when your betraying sisters,
cauled in tar,
wept by the railings,

who would convince
in civilized outrage
yet understand the exact
and tribal, intimate revenge

There are a few things that I think are important to point out Irish women who dated British soldiers during the time of the Troubles were often found with tar and feathers on them tied in a public place... so, that's likely important. Also, the women that were found in bogs choked and their heads bashed in were not in fact criminals who were found guilty of a crime but were semi-willing sacrifices to Woden, and so his reading into it not entirely historically accurate.