Following North, Heaney’s next collection of poetry was Field Work which largely documents his four years spent in Glanmore County Wicklow. The significance of this move is that it took him South of the border with the Republic of Ireland, a haven away from the sectarian violence of the North. Inevitably, this could be assumed as Heaney’s deliberate removal from the political situation, however, Joshua Weiner wrote:
While the move south seemed to some a deliberate withdrawal from a previous political commitment to fight the British presence in Ireland, Field Work indicates rather a growing commitment to stay engaged, but to do so by maintaining the long view, which asks questions more than it assumes positions.
Accordingly, Heaney’s preoccupation …show more content…
Moreover, Heaney confirmed this was intentional in an interview with Henri Cole in The Paris Review: “a poem like ‘The Ministry of Fear’…[is] written in blank verse; there’s not much sport between the words of it.” The use of Heaney’s own voice is then reinforced in ‘Exposure’, the final poem of the ‘Singing School’ series, by directly asserting that he is “neither internee nor informer” and therefore he must be the voice of the poet. Elmer Andrews adds that ‘Exposure’ attests to many of Heaney’s prose statements, comments and reviews as he generally writes from the point of view of the poet and never the political spokesman.
In Field Work, Heaney renewed a commitment “to raise / A voice”, one that would become more social. This is explicit in an interview with James Randall for Ploughshares magazine in 1979, he claims the form of previous publications such as Wintering Out and North restricted him from expressing his view …show more content…
This ambiguous phrase is open to many interpretations, however, in the context of this poem the obvious one is that the father and son have achieved a moment of peace through their respective crafts. Law argues that it gives an insight into the difficulty Heaney faced when finding his own particular voice and technique. Furthermore, according to Andrews, this difficulty was the “sectarian cross fire…[of] Catholics pressing him to write political verse and liberal critics congratulating him on not taking sides.” The particular process of making the bow with his father embodies this difficulty. To add to Patmore’s assessment of poetry, Yeats states that “the following of art is little different from the following of religion in the intense preoccupation it demands.” Clearly Heaney was preoccupied, as was Yeats, with the role of the poet and the voice they used to express that role, and perhaps Heaney only became aware of this when he wrote Field Work. Therefore, this quote serves as a fitting manifestation of that constant preoccupation in Heaney’s
While the move south seemed to some a deliberate withdrawal from a previous political commitment to fight the British presence in Ireland, Field Work indicates rather a growing commitment to stay engaged, but to do so by maintaining the long view, which asks questions more than it assumes positions.
Accordingly, Heaney’s preoccupation …show more content…
Moreover, Heaney confirmed this was intentional in an interview with Henri Cole in The Paris Review: “a poem like ‘The Ministry of Fear’…[is] written in blank verse; there’s not much sport between the words of it.” The use of Heaney’s own voice is then reinforced in ‘Exposure’, the final poem of the ‘Singing School’ series, by directly asserting that he is “neither internee nor informer” and therefore he must be the voice of the poet. Elmer Andrews adds that ‘Exposure’ attests to many of Heaney’s prose statements, comments and reviews as he generally writes from the point of view of the poet and never the political spokesman.
In Field Work, Heaney renewed a commitment “to raise / A voice”, one that would become more social. This is explicit in an interview with James Randall for Ploughshares magazine in 1979, he claims the form of previous publications such as Wintering Out and North restricted him from expressing his view …show more content…
This ambiguous phrase is open to many interpretations, however, in the context of this poem the obvious one is that the father and son have achieved a moment of peace through their respective crafts. Law argues that it gives an insight into the difficulty Heaney faced when finding his own particular voice and technique. Furthermore, according to Andrews, this difficulty was the “sectarian cross fire…[of] Catholics pressing him to write political verse and liberal critics congratulating him on not taking sides.” The particular process of making the bow with his father embodies this difficulty. To add to Patmore’s assessment of poetry, Yeats states that “the following of art is little different from the following of religion in the intense preoccupation it demands.” Clearly Heaney was preoccupied, as was Yeats, with the role of the poet and the voice they used to express that role, and perhaps Heaney only became aware of this when he wrote Field Work. Therefore, this quote serves as a fitting manifestation of that constant preoccupation in Heaney’s