SeamusHeany's Death of Naturalist poem summary

Death of a Naturalist Heany’s first collection, “Death of a Naturalist” concentrated on the loss of his childhood innocence and how he steps into manhood. In this poem he talks about the boy’s personality and his perception of nature. The poem is split into two parts.The first part describes a child’s encounter with frogspawn,and how facinated he is and eager to learn.The 2nd part describes the rude shock.He gets seeing the adult frogs closeup,and the fear that makes him free. The description of nature is rich in the poem.He uses rich imagery and a vast range of loud sounds.As a poet,his ability to create a variety of sounds is remarkable .He uses onomatopoeia to a large extent,some of the words not too delicate but appropriate-“gargled”, “slap and plop” and “farted”. The poem is written through the wandering eyes of a small child.In the first part of the poem,the poet describes,the flax-dam,the way it smells,held down by large amounts of wet earth.He describes vividly,the various insects,attracted by festering flax,blubottles,dragon flies,spotted butterflies. The ‘little Naturalist’is bursting with curiosity about everything connected with spawn ,collecting “the jellied specks” in “jampots” ,watching them with interminable interest until they burst into “ nimble swimming tad poles”.He learns the real names ,bull frog and frogs-pawn not content with his teachers’ patronishing explanation of daddy and mummy frogs.The enthusiasm of the little scientist is evident in his method of forecasting the weather by the frogs colours. In the second verse the poet describes the frogs as ‘great slime kings’,ugly,sickening,very frightening to the boy that they have come to take revenge for the theft of their spawn.The fields stank of cowdung,and through the grass an almost military invasition of ‘angry frogs’ made their appearance.Through the boy’s eyes they appear menacing making “obscene threats”,bent on vengeance. In this poem the ‘Death of a Naturalist’is also the birth of a poet.Heaney’s early experiences of nature and his childhood are linked to his early experiences of poetry.He experiments with different styles,writing with the range of sounds.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Irony As A Principal Of Structure

                                       “Irony As A Principle Of Structure”                                                                                                 Cleanth Brooks                                                                                                     [1906-1994] Cleanth Brooks was an American literary critic and professor. He is best known for his contributions to  New Criticism  in the mid-20th century and for revolutionizing the teaching of poetry in American higher education. His best-known works,  The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry (1947) and  Modern Poetry and the Tradition  (1939), argue for the centrality of  ambiguity  and  paradox  as a way of understanding poetry. With his writing, Brooks helped to formulate  formalist criticism , emphasizing "the interior life of a poem" (Leitch 2001) and codifying the principles of close reading. Brooks was also the prominent critic of  Southern literature , wri
Read more

The One Act Play "Matsyagandhi" by Sajitha Madathil

                         The One Act Play   Matsyagandhi     by  Sajitha Madathil                              A Short Biography of Sajitha Madathil : "Matsyagandhi" was written by “Sajitha Madhathil ”, who is active in the Malayalam (Kerala) theatre and feminist. She was one of the Abhinethri (actress), the first women’s theatre group in Kerala. Sajitha Madathil is a veteran Indian film and theatre actress. She was born to Chandrashekharan Menon and Savithri at Tanur.She completed her early education from Kozhikode and later got a Masters degree in Theatre from Rabindra Bharathi University in Kolkata. She was always influenced towards theatre and had a keen interest in acting. She is a form of a living legend and has seen the transition from theatre to the cinema and has experienced both. She also got the Best Supporting Actress Award from Asiavision and Kanal Vayala Puraskaram for contribution to Malayalam Theatre.She was never an aggressive woman who loved
Read more

The Verger short story by Somerset Maugham summary

Maugham's "The Verger" is a simple tale about a simple man who does his duties with great joy and dedication. Foreman has been the verger of his church for sixteen years, doing all the menial and manual duties of the vicarage. He loved his job and there were no complaints about him until a new pastor arrived and made a startling discovery--Foreman cannot read. While that fact has never interfered with his duties, the new preacher is appalled and immediately fires the verger.And so, he loses his low-paying job as a verger because it is discovered that he is illiterate, but he adapts to his problem by becoming a successful shopkeeper. He finds he is better off being illiterate. Maugham likes to write about the odd diversity of human characters. In fact, he traveled the world in search of unique characters who would provide inspiration for his stories and novels. "The Verger" is more of a character study than anything else. What is true for the hero of "The
Read more