“As I tasted the salty Pleiades
Orion dipped his foot into the water” (Heaney, 3).
Thus ends the first stanza of “Oysters”, the first poem in Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney’s collection of poems entitled Field Work. The mark of a great poet is when he or she seemingly uses the perfect word to evoke the tone of a poem. I hadn’t read past the first line of the poem when I had this realization: “Our shells clacked on the plates.” Heany could not have picked a better word with which to begin a poem about oysters. As I read the poem, I noticed that Heaney was making historical references. I myself am a history major, so I was curious to see how these references fit in with the poem. One stanza dealt with Romans hauling “their oysters south to Rome” (Heaney, 3). I later learned in class that the Romans did, in fact, used to haul oysters to Rome. The lines that gave me the most trouble while reading the poem make up the quote I used to begin this post. I did some research and found out that Heaney was alluding to an ancient Greek myth. The Pleiades were the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione and were pursued by Orion after Atlas was forced to carry the heavens on his shoulders. I’m not one for poetry, but I have enjoyed the poems we have read in class so far.
It was interesting to see how he fit the history into the poem. I never would have guessed it unless it was researched. But I feel the same about poetry. I don't really like it, but I like the ones we have read in class too. :)
ReplyDeleteGlad you have liked the poems, Bradyn! Sometimes, we can like poems even if we don't totally understand them. And Heaney's work is like that, I think. He is a master of language, and so just reading or hearing them is intriguing.
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