Heaney And Clarke Use Poetry example essay topic

Both Heaney and Clarke use poetry to express their concerns or beliefs about nature. I believe Gillian Clarke's intentions are to write poetry about her views, using metaphors to make the reader think and that Heaney, also, uses nature to express his views, only more directly and his messages are clearer, and more straightforward to the reader. Looking at "Storm on the Island", Seamus Heaney, I believe Heaney feels nature to be a negative thing; the poem considers isolation and living close to nature, making nature out to be destructive and powerful. Heaney refers to earth, water and air- three of nature's elements. He challenges the idea that living on a island is an ideal perfect little way to live, e.g. he waits for the sea to "turn savage and spit". The irony of the poem comes at the end- he fears the "huge nothing", as though Heaney is expressing his views about whether or not our views are imaginary, while using nature to do so.

The poem opens confidently and explains why the people on the island trust their preparations to see them through the storm- but when the storm starts up, there is nothing they can do but wait for it to end. Moving on to look at "A difficult Birth, Easter 1998", Gillian Clarke, I believe Clarke, in this poem, also shows a negative outlook on nature. She (Gillian Clarke) looks into the troubles caused by an ewe giving birth, and sends out a very real, honest message. Clarke challenges the ideal image that children often have about happy animals in a farm, giving birth in a fairytale land; the message Clarke is sending out is much more honest and real, e.g. "She's serious, restless" (referring to the ewe). In these ways, Heaney and Clarke are similar because they are not concentrating on a child's innocent image of the perfect world, they are both very honest, and Heaney especially, is almost brutal with his wording, e.g. "turned savage" (Heaney, Storm on the island), while Clarke takes a more gentle approach by using slightly less harsh language.

However, looking at the ending of "A difficult Birth, Easter 1998", Gillian Clarke, the struggle is over and everything appears to be peaceful, e.g. "the stone rolled away". This is possibly a reference to the bible's story of Jesus rising from his death, and walking out of the cave, with his stone rolled away. Haney's ending to "Storm on the island" is less than peaceful, as he talks about fear and being "bombarded". In "Death of a Naturalist", Heaney describes nature differently.

He portrays is to be something good, something enjoyable. Perhaps he is talking about his childhood, when he uses language like "daddy frog" and "mammy frog". The poem has two distinct sections to it, however. In this first we see Heaney enjoying a pleasant childhood, we can see this in his poetry because he uses language like "warm thick slobber". These things obviously please Heaney, as dirtiness and muskiness would please any young boy. However, in the second section to the poem Heaney does not portray nature as such a good thing anymore.

He has grown up and seen what nature can really be like. We know he feels he is not such a fan of nature anymore because he says, "fields were rank" and "I sickened, turned". Nature is still the same, it is Heaney who has changed- the things he enjoyed once, now sicken him and make him want to turn away. Clarke, also, writes about nature in a better way. In "The Field Mouse" (Gillian Clarke), she writes about civil war between the Bosnian's and Kosova ns; she makes nature out to be innocent and being ruined by the war.

Clarke refers to the grass as a "snare drum", comparing the grass to a war drum, and "the air hums with jets". This means the grass is noisy, and the jets above are dropping bombs. She also mentions "our neighbour", "gift of sweetness", talking about the neighbouring peaceful countries who aren't involved in the war, and gifted not to be. The child and the mouse play important roles in this poem, as they are innocent and suffering. From the quote "We know it will die, and ought to finish it off", we can tell the people are in an immense deal of pain because she is saying should die, rather than live longer but suffer more.

There is no hope left, we know this because of the quote "the star goes out in its eye". Quotes such as "we can't face the newspapers", and "my neighbour turned", we know there is betrayal between friends because of the war, and nobody wants to hear the news because they know it's going to be bad and they don't want to face it. The poem doesn't finish happily. Clarke sees how the hay cutting has unintentional results, and how animals, which have survived, are now refugees in their own home. Children, because they are fragile and vulnerable, "their bones brittle as mouse-ribs", are upset by what they see. Heaney and Clarke are similar in that they both intend to make the reader think and are both successful in this way; however, Heaney could do better to use more metaphor's, the way Gillian Clarke does, because you have to read between the lines to find the real message, which draws you into the poetry.

Gillian Clarke also uses metaphor's people can relate to- i. e., comparing a child to a mouse, where as Heaney, in his poetry, compares to living on an island; not everybody has experienced this, leaving Clarke's poetry with a more personal touch.