Door into the Dark: Poems

Seamus Heaney's collection of poems entitled Door into the Dark was originally published in 1969. Heaney is a Nobel laureate and it shows in this volume of poetry. Many of these poems focus on Heaney's native country of Ireland, the landscape, the rural people, the bloodshed. Sometimes Heaney takes you off the face of the planet and into a new realm. In the poem "The Penninsula," he gives the reader a sense of being on a narrow, tenuous stretch of land that seems uninhabited by humans:The sky is tall as over a runway,/ The land without marks so you will not arrive/But pass through, though always skirting landfall./ At dusk, horizons drink down sea and hill,/ The ploughed field swallows the whitewashed gable/ And you're in the dark again. Many of the poems in this volume focus on rural people and the work they do, including a thatcher and a farm wife. As in other work of his, Heaney uses onomatopoeia with energy and exactness. He often forgoes traditional rhyme, but uses internal rhyme which contributes to the rhythm of the poem. Here are lines from "Thatcher" to illustrate my point: "He eyed the old rigging, poked at the eaves,/ Opened and handled sheaves of lashed wheat-straw." One of the fiercest poems in the collection is "Requiem for the Croppies." An Oxford English Dictionary is an important resource. I discovered that Croppies were Irish rebels who, in 1798, cropped their hair very short to show their alliance with the French Revolution. The sonnet seems to be a favorite form of Heaney; he uses it to describe the slaughter of the Irish rebels by English forces: ...on Vinegar Hill, the fatal conclave./ Terraced thousands died, shaking scythes at canon./ The hillside blushed, soaked in our broken wave./ They buried us without shroud or coffin/ And in August the barley grew up out of the grave. I recommend keeping a dictionary nearby when you read any poetry and certainly when you read Heaney's work. You may want to look up words such as couchant, thatcher, tarn, and bespoke. A reader of poetry knows that every word of every poem is essential in appreciating and understanding the total meaning. Heaney's poetry is intense, challenging, and definitely worthwhile. I recommend any/all of his books.

DOOR INTO THE DARK (1969) is Seamus Heaney's second book of poems. As with the first, "Death of a Naturalist", many of the poems have as their subject the rural life. For example: a forge and the blacksmith, stables, breeding a cow to a bull, a thatcher, a frozen outdoor water pump, and threshing. Some deal with fishing and eeling, notably the beguiling seven-poem "A Lough Neagh Sequence". A few deal with Ireland and one, my favorite, with Irish history. That is "Requiem for the Croppies", which I here set out:The pockets of our greatcoats full of barley --No kitchens on the run, no striking camp --We moved quick and sudden in our own country.The priest lay behind ditches with the tramp.A people, hardly marching -- on the hike --We found new tactics happening each day:We'd cut through reins and rider with the pikeAnd stampede cattle into infantry,Then retreat through hedges where cavalry must be thrown.Until, on Vinegar Hill, the fatal conclave.Terraced thousands died, shaking scythes at cannon.The hillside blushed, soaked in our broken wave.They buried us without shroud or coffinAnd in August the barley grew up out of the grave.Though of the thirty-four poems, there is only one other sonnet, most of the poems are formal and many employ rhyme. That is one reason I take to Heaney. Another is that he writes about people and human activity (rather than abstractions or metaphysics), and hence his poems are easily understood.

I love everything about Seamus Heaney apart from the fact that he know longer walks this planet in the same form.

Great work from a great poet -sadly missed -some of his early work is his best and can appeal to a global audience even though the themes are mainly irish

Superb read by a master

Good early poems from Seamus Heaney but not up to the standard of his very first offering Death of a Naturalist, so not as rewarding a read.

Excellent