The Poetry of Sound

As exemplified in Seamus Heaney

In his A Defence of Poetry, Percy Shelley states, in a seemingly casual manner, that “language itself is poetry; and to be a poet is to apprehend the true and the beautiful”. He goes on to say that “Poetry is ever accompanied with pleasure.” Much ink has been spilt on what is and isn’t poetry; even more on what makes good poetry distinct from bad poetry. A cursory glance throughout the course of literary criticism reveals this to be true: Art of Poetry by Horace, An Apology for Poetry by Philip Sidney, The Art of Poetry by Despreaux, Preface to the Second Edition of Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth, A Defence of Poetry by Percy Shelley, and The Poetic Principle by Edgar Allen Poe are but to name a few. All of these works, from vastly different time periods and milieus, grapple with the elusive question of what makes poetry poetry; and not all of them agree. I do not claim to be as learned as these great writers, much less am I endeavoring in this little essay to add anything startling or revolutionary to the already full library of literary criticism. My aim, simply put, is to state why I love poetry and how I believe the best way that poetry “apprehends the beautiful” and produces pleasure is through sound. To accomplish this I want to examine two poems by the author I consider the truest poet of sound: Seamus Heaney.   

The chief end of poetry is to afford pleasure by way of revealing or contemplating the Beautiful. Others may disagree with me, and let them come with swords drawn, but I will maintain that this is the goal of all poetry to my last breath. And this pleasure is most often, I would almost say exclusively, derived from sound. Language is poetry, Shelley says; one could also say that poetry is language. Throughout much of history poetry has been recited, spoken, and heard through the medium of language. Picture, if you can, some dark and smokey hall where nobles and warriors sit crowded on benches in front of a blazing hearth. There merriment and boisterous chatter is heard while the drinking cup is passed from hand to hand. Suddenly a hush sweeps over the room as into the firelight steps an old (and often blind) man. He begins to chant, softly at first, his voice rising and falling in rhythmic cadence, as he recites the heroics of Hector and the Fall of Troy, the travails of Odysseus, or how Beowulf grappled with Grendel, while his audience listens spellbound. Such is our bard, scop, troubadour, ἀοιδός, call him what you will, such is our poet. It has been only a relatively recent phenomenon that poetry has been printed in little books and read in the quiet solitude of an easy-chair while a clock ticks on the mantle. Before, one listened to poetry. And what a power it had. It is through the act of recitation and listening that poetry imparts its greatest joy. The flowing, melodic rhythm of language. The delight of rhyme, word inversions, and the steady thrumming of syllable after syllable dripping from the mouth of the poet as it reverberates in the listener’s ear. For the power of poetry is found in the harnessing of the power of words. It is that sound delights our minds and stirs our souls. Leaving metaphor and deeper imagery aside (indispensable to poetry), at its purest level the sound of poetry (I almost say flavor) is what captivates us. A small child cannot comprehend deep metaphors or allusions, but they can (and do) take joy in the bouncing rhythm of a nursery rhyme or the lilting melody of Dr. Suess.

The reader must excuse this brief digression, but I felt it was necessary to prepare our minds for what I am about to write and to attempt to reorient our view of how poetry was originally intended to be received. It is my hope that having done this, it will make the following discussion of Heaney’s poems more conducive to the modern mind and open up new avenues to enjoying poetry. We will start by examining “Digging”. I encourage you not only to read this silently, but also aloud (for a link to a video of Heaney reading this poem click here: Digging). 

Between my finger and my thumb   
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound   
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:   
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds   
Bends low, comes up twenty years away   
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills   
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft   
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.   
Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner’s bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.  

Though rich in imagery and deeper meaning these aren’t our present concerns when analyzing this poem. We are purely interested with the sonorous nature of Heaney’s words and how they serve to captivate and place the reader in his memory of his grandfather digging. We’ll begin with the second line which Heaney comprises entirely of monosyllables. These short, punchy words mimic the action occurring in the line, and lend a staccato-like rhythm to the beginning of the poem as a whole. It is almost as if we, the reader, are compactly tucked away in Heaney’s fist - waiting to see what this pen, likened to a gun, will reveal. 

Moving into the second stanza of the poem we see Heaney is now varying the amount of syllables per line and this time he makes particular use of alliteration, “the spade sinks into gravelly ground”. While it’s not important to understand the term alliteration, what is important is to pay attention to the sound of the line. Once again Heaney’s words not only frame the action, but enhance it. One can imagine the noise of the spade as it rises and falls, “rasping” when it plunges into the earth. And we the listeners are carried along with the shovel (and Heaney) in its quest to dig.

While Heaney continues this masterful use of language and sound throughout the poem, I want to focus in on two of my favorite parts of “Digging”. The first is “Once I carried him milk in a bottle / Corked sloppily with paper”. Here is poetry in it’s purest, most primal form. On the surface it appears to be a fairly descriptive albeit basic thought. He brought his grandfather some refreshment. However, notice the sound of the line. “Corked sloppily”. That wonderful combination of consonants and vowels evokes a welter of sensations, emotions, and images. The hardness of the c and k in corked bring to mind the wad of newspaper plugging the hole of the bottle while the excess of p’s and the lilting l’s in sloppily and paper precisely mimic the noise and appearance of milk, carried by an eager boy across a soot-black field of freshly turned earth, sloshing around in a glass bottle. The words alone do not convey this vivid imagery. It is when they are married to their sound that the picture comes to life in our brains. And this is the beauty of poetry, the craftsmanship of Heaney, and the power of sound.

One final selection from “Digging” before moving on to the next poem. The first three lines of the second to last stanza “The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap / Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge / Through living roots awaken in my head” are a treasury in and of themselves. But they also serve as a microcosm of the techniques I have already expounded on in Heaney’s poem. Alliteration, monosyllables, polysyllables, even onomatopoeia make their appearance in these three short wonderful lines. We are using all five of our senses purely through the reading and hearing of words: sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. How wonderful, how marvelous, is the power of poetry! And Heaney accomplishes all of this in the mind of his reader by his words, which with their curt, cutting edge awaken in our heads the beauty and force inherent in language through sound.

The final poem to come under our scrutiny is “Blackberry Picking”. Once again I encourage you to read the poem aloud, savoring its particular flavor and sound (here is Heaney reading the poem). 

Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full,
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.

We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.

Here we have a poem more structured and regimented than “Digging”, with its use of slant-rhyming couplets and rough iambic pentameter meter. But that isn’t the focus of this essay. And one doesn’t even need to understand those terms to derive pleasure from this poem. Once again, we are concerned with examining the sound quality of the poem and how Heaney utilizes that to not only provide delight to the reader, but also draw them into the memory itself.

We can deal with this poem more briefly as it shares similar characteristics to “Digging” in its use of sound. Notice in line 3 how the sound of the words once again mimics the action occurring, “At first, just one, a glossy purple clot”. Here, not only the use of monosyllables for the first five words, but also the commas, intentionally slow the reader (or listener) down and heightens our expectation. In these words we long for the burgeoning of the first blackberry of summer just as much as Heaney did. In fact, we see the whole process of growth to fruition in this line. The slow buildup of a seed beginning to sprout, “at first, just one”, then the emergence of the berry, “a glossy purple”, all culminating in a fully ripened fruit with the terminating monosyllable “clot”. It hangs there, ripe and ready to be plucked. Each word, each sound and syllable serve Heaney like the paints on an artist’s palette to create a mental image in the mind of his reader. While there are many lovely examples to tease out in this poem, I will focus on one more that I find particularly beautiful. “Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots / Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots”. These words are the most musical to be found in the entire poem. One can easily imagine the bright tinkling noise of all those containers, joyfully jostling, as berry after juicy berry plops into them, and this is because Heaney deliberately makes use of short jangling words, many of which start with aspirated consonants. Or again, the damp grass is heard as eager feet swish through thick tussocks, hastening towards thickets of blackberries all while boots get caught in the mire. The alliteration of bleached boots conjures to mind the sucking mud of a bog and at once our mental image is made richer and fuller through the medium of sound.

Language is the most powerful invention of humanity, and poetry is language in its most perfected form. And while poetry may at times seem obtuse and far beyond the ken of people (in fact many have an outright aversion to poetry based on the esoteric air academics give it today), at its most fundamental level it is merely the arranging of sounds in varied patterns that bring pleasure to author and listener alike. And it is on this fundamental level that poetry can and ought to be enjoyed. I hope this essay has served to demystify to some extent poetry, and encouraged you not only to experience the riches poetry has to offer, but also to reconsider just how powerful language and sound itself truly is.  

Happy Reading,

Drew