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Back in 1987–88, I did a GCSE in English Literature. One of the authors we studied was Seamus Heaney, and the experience served to put me off poetry for life.
I found his use of language to be obtuse. The poems had little to say, and what they did say seemed repetitious, and lacked structure and rhythm. There were jarring descriptions, making the poems unnecessarily difficult to read. I found them hard to understand when read to myself, and hard to get my tongue around when read aloud. A poem like “Digging” reads like a piece of bad prose. We were told that this was great poetry, but I totally failed to understand what was good about it.
Mind you, this is a 41-year-old looking back on what his 15-year-old self thought of Seamus Heaney, so it probably isn’t a fair summing up.
I found his use of language to be obtuse. The poems had little to say, and what they did say seemed repetitious, and lacked structure and rhythm. There were jarring descriptions, making the poems unnecessarily difficult to read. I found them hard to understand when read to myself, and hard to get my tongue around when read aloud. A poem like “Digging” reads like a piece of bad prose. We were told that this was great poetry, but I totally failed to understand what was good about it.
Mind you, this is a 41-year-old looking back on what his 15-year-old self thought of Seamus Heaney, so it probably isn’t a fair summing up.
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