CoPo

Wow. The lecture today pretty much cemented Heaney as my favorite poet so far this semester. I had a vague awareness of his work coming into the class, so I was really looking forward to cracking open these poems. Coming from an Irish Catholic (and only recently American) family, Heaney’s got a special uncomfortable spot in our hearts.  I’ve never experienced such discomfort from reading poetry before. I came to my mother’s house to share it with her, and she’s sitting across the room, reading “July,” and crying. I vaguely remember hearing talk about the troubles when I was a kid, but it was never called anything. It was what it was. We were never allowed to wear orange. We were poor in Ireland, then we came to America to be poor here instead. That’s the simple version. That’s all they ever tell a kid. But it’s amazing to have it opened up before you, to put a name to it. To think that that kind of thinking can follow a family across an ocean, and here I am, years later, still hung up on it, even though what I’ve been handed is most-assuredly a watered-down version of actual sentiment. My mom says, “You remember it with your blood.”

Original post by sfranklin