Domhnall

This is possibly the most accessible collection yet from Heaney; it is my favourite so far (out of eight, reading in order of publication).

The book opens with a few pages of translation from the Aeneid, and closes with some pages translated from Dante's Inferno; in each case, a demonstration of what Heaney can achieve and perhaps an enticement to do more in that way. Many of the other poems are visibly disciplined to fit a formal structure in one way or another, with generally delightful results, though the exercise provokes the occasional barbarous expression [to be brutally honest, that probably reflects my limitations and not his, as I have since found by reading Helen Vendler's book on Heaney]. This suggests a writer still working on his technique, not resting on laurels that had certainly accumulated by this time, but the impression of greater simplicity and clarity is of course a mark of great skill.

After his previous book focused on his mother, this one opens with a number of poems that seem to refer to his father, albeit the reference can be lightly concealed; that slightly coy evasion may be part of the point in this relationship, where direct statements of affection may be unwanted.

"Riveted steel, turned timber, burnish, grain,
Smoothness, straightness, roundness, length and sheen,
Sweat-cured, sharpened, balanced, tested, fitted.
The springiness, the clip and dart of it."

These are by all means attributes of a pitchfork, and I do love a list, but surely the poem is really about its owner, "he" who "loves its grain of tapering, dark-flecked ash." The son is observing with admiration and love his father’s fondness for the pitchfork; but let’s not be too overt about it.

In the title poem, Seeing Things, Heaney refers to his father going to spray the potatoes, and this invites an obvious association with Patrick Kavanagh's subversive poem on that same subject. Kavanagh refused to romanticise this mundane farming chore; there is anger bottled up in his frank realism, though it takes a few readings to discern. Heaney’s account is far more cheerful; the toxic spraying materials are incorporated in his poem too but the occasion is one for farce and good humour.

Whether they describe his childhood or his own family as an adult, Heaney’s poems in this volume are good natured and content, with only the slightest hint from time to time towards the darker world of Irish politics. Yet there may be an implicit politics all the same in his appeal to the basic decency of this life, its intrinsic worth.