Frost and Heaney

• Poem


  A type of a journal of a life, but it's not the journal of a life
• Language of poetry


  Everything is open to interpretation
• Strategy for analysis and interpretation

  Awareness of content and form
• Poets who look to the land


  • Intellectuals and popular
  • Nature and the vernacular
  • Writing at different times in different continents
  • Experts in manipulation of language in similar and very different ways
• Seamus Heaney: 'I felt at home in the world of his poetry—the New England farm world, the people, the idiom that was used. I now realise that Frost is a highly literary poet but he allows the world as it is to have its say.'
• Heaney on Frost


  The Wife's Tale is practically a Frost pastiche, but Heaney doesn't think of Frost as genetically important to his voice - Hopkins was far more important
• What you are looking at is possibly not what the poem is looking at
• BOGLAND


  Symbol of creativity, holiness, healing, life-giving qualities, a magic space
• FOR ONCE, THEN, SOMETHING


  • Vulnerability of the speaker
  • A poem on seeing after trauma
  • What is seen and what is perceived
  • Classical allusions vs reality/present
  • Surety and uncertainty of a poet's craft
  • How is language manipulated
  • Conclusions differ over similar activities
• THE CONWAY STEWART


  The consideration of objects