Seamus Heaney :: Writers Poets Poetry Essays

Seamus Heaney Seamus Heaney was born in April 1939 in Northern Ireland. His father owned and worked fifty acres of farmland in County Derry in N.I. Patrick Heaney had always been committed to cattle-dealing. Seamus’ parents died quite early in his life and so his uncle had to take care of him from then on. Heaney grew up as a country boy and attended the local primary school. When he was twelve he won a scholarship to St. Columb’s College, a catholic boarding school situated in the city of Derry. Heaney moved to Belfast later in his life where he lived for fifteen years and then moved to the republic. Since 1982 he made annual visits to America to teach and since then he started writing his poems. Heaney’s first poem was called ‘Digging’. The aims of this essay are to compare two of Seamus Heaneys’s poems which deal with the theme of childhood. The two poems are called ‘The Early Purges’ and ‘Mid-Term Break’. The relevance of the title ‘The Early Purges’ is that it informs us about what happens during the poem and it tells us what the subject of the poem is. The poem goes straight into what it is about and it is based the death of animals on a farm and is subjected to two people’s opinions over the killing of the animals. The poem is very ambiguous and ironic with a gory tone to it because of its in depth description of the death. The poem has seven three line stanzas called tercets, and each line holds five to ten words keeping the poem easy to read throughout. Heaney has chosen to use this stanza structure and line length because it builds up tension and keeps you in suspense. It is also easier to digest in small stanzas and I think he has done this for us to get the full effect of the poem. There is a rhyme scheme in the poem but is split into para-rhymes because it gives a flow to the poem and grasps the readers attention all the way through. Seamus Heaney uses lots of imagery in this poem to get the reader to really imagine how the animals were treated on the farm. Heaney mentions a line that Dan Taggart had said on the farm. â€Å"Like wet Gloves† Dan had thought they looked like wet gloves when they were being drowned. Also while Heaney had watched the kittens drown, he said that he had watched them â€Å"Turn mealy and crisp as old summer dung†. As you can see, again how Heaney exaggerates on the killing of