DDCPoetry

Original poem reprinted online here:   "Anything Can Happen" by Seamus Heaney Originally read: September 5, 2013 More information about the Poet:   Seamus Heaney The poem starts off innocuous enough with the opening line "Anything can happen."  The tone comes in as very colloquial, especially with the next line, "You know how Jupiter / Will mostly wait for clouds to gather head / Before he hurls lightning?"  And then the conversation turns to allusion.  Nothing against Roman deities, but this is now the tone of someone trying to talk to the reader on another level -- high metaphor -- but for what purpose? "Well, just now / He galloped his thunder cart and his horses / Across a clear blue sky."  From here the speaker's observations become more prevalent and it's less of a colloquial conversational tone, and more of a "please believe me" kind of begging the reader tone. And so the description continues, "It shook the earth / ...

Original poem reprinted online here: "Fireside" by Seamus Heaney Originally read: June 28, 2013 More information about the Poet: Seamus Heaney A very loose Elizabethan sonnet, but the subject matter also has that very loose unknown quality to it.  Ephemeral, seen without definition.  Okay So we'll go quatrain at a time:      Always there would be stories of lights      hovering among bushes or at the foot      of a meadow; maybe a goat with cold horns      pluming into the moon; a tingle of chains The first stanza is very image based; however, note the usage of the semi-colon to list how these stories occur.  In the first line there is the mention of lights and how the light reacts, "hovering among bushes," or "at the foot of a meadow," which tell location.  The goal line, "a goat with cold horns / pluming into the moon" feels like a reasoning line, but it's goes toward the absurd by the description, and "a ...

Original poem reprinted online here: "Follower" by Seamus Heaney Originally read: January 26, 2013 More information about the Poet: Seamus Heaney So the poem is in rhymed quatrains that works sort of like a question and answer poem.  The first three  stanza sets up a certain question and the last three stanzas answer the question. The first three stanzas define the "Follower" as the father.  A person who, for generations probably, worked the field.  The single statement of "An expert" actually made me see the poem in a different way when I reread this today.  Past me wrote, "The fragment sets up a distinct definition, and the following sentences -- discussing of technique with no description shows expertise."  Maybe I'm not looking at the poem at this angle at this time. Currently, I'm thinking how to be an expert at something, and placement.  For a horse-plough there's the horse, who is in front, and the person who is in "contro...