Death of a Naturalist. Seamus Heaney. Faber and Faber.
Reviewed by Michael Byrne
Seamus Heaney was born in 1939 and died in 2013 (aged 74). During his lifetime, he authored a number of collections of poetry. His first major volume, Death of a Naturalist, was published by Faber and Faber in 1966. Death of a Naturalist is an outstanding debut collection, notable (amongst other things) for its lyrical and descriptive powers.
In a debut collection, the first poem is important. There is the chance to make a statement (‘Digging’):
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.
Heaney’s first poem does this. He also uses a lot of imagery to describe a more physical kind of digging (‘Digging’):
The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
The reader almost participates in the more physical digging. The imagery is that vivid. Another vivid poem in Death of a Naturalist is ‘Mid-Term Break’. In ‘Mid-Term Break’, Heaney, as a schoolboy, gets a chance to see his dead younger brother:
Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,
Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,
He lay in the four foot box as in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.
A four foot box, a foot for every year.
‘Mid-Term Break’ is a moving poem. Also, the last line is a good observation. Finally, the penultimate and last lines rhyme, which adds force to the ending. In other poems in Death of a Naturalist, Heaney also displays technical nous (‘Poor Women in a City Church’):
The small wax candles melt to light,
Flicker in marble, reflect bright
Asterisks on brass candlesticks:
At the Virgin’s altar on the right,
Blue flames are jerking on wicks.
Old dough-faced women with black shawls
Drawn down tight kneel in the stalls.
Cold yellow candle-tongues, blue flame
Mince and caper as whispered calls
Take wing up to the Holy Name.
Thus each day in the sacred place
They kneel. Golden shrines, altar lace,
Marble columns and cool shadows
Still them. In the gloom you cannot trace
A wrinkle on their beeswax brows.
Here, none of the rhymes seem forced or cumbersome. There is also the subtlety of the half-rhyme of ‘shadows’ and brows’. However the poems are arranged, they have a naturalness about them (‘Death of a Naturalist’):
Then one hot day when fields were rank
With cowdung in the grass, the 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 dam, gross-bellied frogs were cocked
On sods; their loose necks pulsed like snails. Some hopped:
The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat
Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads 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.
The language in this poem is quite concentrated. It has an energy to it. Other poems in Death of a Naturalist are notable for their precise detail (‘Follower’):
My father worked with a horse-plough,
His shoulders globed like a full sail strung
Between the shafts and the furrow.
The horses strained at his clicking tongue.
An expert. He would set the wing
And fit the bright steel-pointed sock.
The sod rolled over without breaking.
At the headrig, with a single pluck
Of reins, the sweating team turned round
And back into the land. His eye
Narrowed and angled at the ground,
Mapping the furrow exactly.
In Death of a Naturalist, Heaney writes about practical matters well. He also makes the practical poetic. Death of a Naturalist is a collection that is poetic. It is the auspicious debut of one of the great modern poets.
Michael Byrne 