Seamus Heaney, "North"

Hi all –

Wednesday evening was sweltering. It cooled off a bit but you always knew it was 101 degrees a minute ago. Outside at a college fair, I watched as families lined up for hours to take advantage of free food.

People are desperate. No, it won't look like the images from Gaza. But you can tell that money is very tight. That they're making requests they wouldn't normally make. That they're dressing up after not eating for hours because you can't give up your dignity.

The reality of a broken economy and lawless governance is visible. I know people who will deny it. They'll say I'm exaggerating, that hundreds of people lined up in the heat because food and prizes get everyone excited. In this area, no one will admit they were laid off or that paychecks are inconsistent. It is dangerous to say you're out of work to a certain kind of person.

I'm working on my lesson plans and I'll post them here as they're finished. I need my students to articulate what's happening to them. You need the words to express the specific pain, the specific frustration, the means of oppression. It isn't enough, after all, to say "it's hot outside." You have to say that you waited in the sun f0r a meal you needed because the paycheck couldn't be stretched. You have to ask who may be responsible. The labor of this region makes billions for those who command armies of employees, if not armies themselves.

One thing on Gaza you should read

Amy Brown has a short blog about the starvation of children. It won't take you long to finish, but you'll want to share it with anyone and everyone.

You also need this video about being profiled in the U.S.

Seamus Heaney, "North"

We travel to see history and find dust. Gettysburg, when I went, was green and sunny. You knew there was a spot where hundreds died, blood and limbs everywhere, but nothing you saw told you that. Only quiet lingered.

In "North," Heaney ventures to see it all. A point where Ireland was invaded, where centuries of conflict began. If you're standing at the edge of a bay, can you see how one people decided to conquer another? The empire imagined and created? He stands at a "long strand," "the hammered curve of a bay," and stretches his mind to "the unmagical / invitations of Iceland, / the pathetic colonies / of Greenland." He does not consider plunder or distant settlement himself; the view of those who would cross a titanic ocean for the smallest sliver of land is somewhat alien to him.

For a moment, what he hears is the ocean itself, "the secular / powers of the Atlantic thundering."

North (from Poetry Magazine)
Seamus Heaney

I returned to a long strand,
the hammered curve of a bay,
and found only the secular
powers of the Atlantic thundering.

I faced the unmagical
invitations of Iceland,
the pathetic colonies
of Greenland, and suddenly

those fabulous raiders,
those lying in Orkney and Dublin
measured against
their long swords rusting,

those in the solid
belly of stone ships,
those hacked and glinting
in the gravel of thawed streams

were ocean-deafened voices
warning me, lifted again
in violence and epiphany.
The longship’s swimming tongue

was buoyant with hindsight—
it said Thor’s hammer swung
to geography and trade,
thick-witted couplings and revenges,

the hatreds and behind-backs
of the althing, lies and women,
exhaustions nominated peace,
memory incubating the spilled blood.

It said, ‘Lie down
in the word-hoard, burrow
the coil and gleam
of your furrowed brain.

Compose in darkness.
Expect aurora borealis
in the long foray
but no cascade of light.

Keep your eye clear
as the bleb of the icicle,
trust the feel of what nubbed treasure
your hands have known.

Before we continue further, I must remark on the poet and The Poet. For fans of epic poetry and Great Books nerds, there is this notion that The Poet can summarize their entire age, call forth the ghosts of the past, and build the entrance to the future. It's a notion reinforced by the close-reading of literature and the traditions that invokes. And it is not entirely empty talk. Homer's Iliad and Odyssey depict a change in the very essence of religion. Gods cease to interfere in mortal affairs, as all the heroes, god/human hybrids, die. What replaces their presence are the pious duties we pair with morality. Virgil's Aeneid walks you through the grandstanding of empire without shying away from its nihilistic bloodletting. These are remarkable works which have led audiences throughout the centuries to posit The Poet, the voice which defines a people. Other poets seem small, and many lament that there only mere poets remain.

Ultimately, The Poet is a ridiculous conceit, but it exists for a reason. You're a poet. People read you and quote you as an authority. They ask for your words and insights. You may not feel like you define a people, but you do feel an obligation to engage the larger themes of who we are, where we came from, and where we are going. Some artists try to dodge this, going so far as to avoid interpreting the art of others, positing that what is made can speak through its musical sounds or painterly images or vibe generation alone. I think there are some who have made and done amazing things for others who are failing on this count. We need a space where things are meant. Without it, we're navel-gazing and undermining what we give.

Heaney stands on that "long strand" in the place of The Poet. It isn't strictly a nod to Homer or directly invoke Yeats. It conjures an ambivalence, a question. What are we doing here? What is he doing there?

Heaney stands out there, hearing only the ocean "thundering." Then "suddenly / those fabulous raiders," buried throughout Ireland in their longships with their weapons and treasure, "hacked and glinting," speak. Their "ocean-deafened voices," lifted in "violence and epiphany," warn.

Many times I've visited a site integral to countless histories and felt nothing. There was light and dust and I left. I won't judge those who nod solemnly at the site and move on. But I believe nowadays that this is a failing. The pagan world did not see a copse of trees by some rocks and a stream. They saw where some god tried to charm a human, failed, and the human tried to swim away. You could say this is the logic of superstition, but it isn't that. We're plenty superstitious in a different way. What's at stake is a consciousness of history: everything is meaningful to someone, and therefore everything is meaningful to us, the totality of individuals. This is history; this is what allows us to hear from the villains and pedants we have to punish and shun. I need to learn to see the soldiers at Gettysburg ordered to march to their death for a worthless, evil cause. I need to learn to see the ones who lost limbs and threw away their racism.

Heaney writes about a broken Ireland with voices lifted in "violence and epiphany." He hears the past because he hears his present.

Before the warning, Heaney hears a noble recounting. A poetic legacy, historical but not quite historical. "The longship's swimming tongue," the glorious burials of mass murderers, "said Thor's hammer swung / to geography and trade, / thick-witted couplings and revenges, / the hatreds and behind-backs / of the althing, lies and women, / exhaustions nominated peace."

You could discredit this as poetic invention, only meant to excite our emotions. The truth is they were heartless, stupid butchers, no? Invaders who could not take "no" for answer, who had to hack their way into history. From my vantage, the critique is all the more devastating if you let them announce their delusion. Even now, with villains who are revenge-addicted cranks, who make no noble pretensions, you can let their fantasies humiliate them. Look at them destroy education for their own children because they want to follow an influencer they will tire of in six weeks. Or because they're an outright white nationalist.

In this case, it's almost tempting to believe the "couplings and revenges" and "lies and women" add up to something grand. In reality, there's just unspent gold and jewels that can't be worn next to a corpse. Heaney's earlier line, that they are "measured against / their long swords rusting," is, as the kids say, savage.

Finally, the warning. A warning given by imperial regret, by "hindsight," as Heaney notes.

It said, ‘Lie down
in the word-hoard, burrow
the coil and gleam
of your furrowed brain.

Compose in darkness.
Expect aurora borealis
in the long foray
but no cascade of light.

Keep your eye clear
as the bleb of the icicle,
trust the feel of what nubbed treasure
your hands have known.

The warning is comprised of six imperatives: "lie down," "burrow," "compose," "expect," "keep, "trust." Unsurprisingly, they speak to the task of writing, as if trying to win an empire or build a concrete monument to oneself was doomed to failure. The first commandment: "Lie down / in the word-hoard," immerse yourself in vocabulary, in all the words you can muster. I said above my task in teaching is to make sure students can articulate what is happening to them. I don't know that such a task is possible without the words, without the will to create the words. "Lie down / in the word-hoard" is a radical call, whether charting a path to peace in war-torn Ireland or showing Americans that panic and security theater create unending loops of cruelty.

The warning can be understood as one of creating a legacy and one of survival. For a little while I puzzled over "Keep your eye clear / as the bleb of the icicle" – isn't this the sort of advice warriors give to other warriors? Don't you want to see a target clearly? And what about trusting "the feel of what nubbed treasure / your hands have known?" Can't someone take that to be an excuse to loot and steal? You're laughing but think about how much advice–advice coming from teachers and pastors–treats everything like it is a war to be won.

But I can't read those last lines now without thinking of the note of regret they sound. Clarity of vision would dictate not getting on a boat and sailing endless miles to enslave a random island. That isn't looking at anything; that's just moving to grab. And trusting the treasure you actually know is about doing the work of valuing what you have. It is work, not simply admonitions to oneself or others to be grateful. The world is a rich place worth exploring and enjoying. It is because I have traveled I can appreciate home that much more, and because I appreciate home that much more I'd like to see other places. The warning, ultimately, is to not neglect love.