Field Work (1979)
Detailed analysis of every key poem in Heaney's collection, with quotations, form analysis, themes, and comparisons to Sheers.
Collection Overview
Title Significance
- "Field Work" = agricultural labour (Heaney's rural background)
- "Field Work" = fieldwork (research, observation, gathering)
- "Field Work" = work done "in the field" (poetry amidst Troubles violence)
- Pun: "field" as rural landscape AND arena of conflict
Major Themes
Detailed Poem Analyses
Speaker eating oysters reflects on luxury, guilt, and hunger. Consumption as conscious act while Troubles rage.
Key Quotations & Analysis
“Our shells clacked on the plates”
Onomatopoeia; casual luxury. ‘Our’ implicates speaker in privilege.
“My tongue was a filling estuary, / My palate hung with starlight”
Sensual imagery; eating becomes cosmic. Synaesthesia (taste/sight merged).
“Alive and violated / They lay on their beds of ice”
Paradox (alive/violated); oysters as victims. Introduces guilt.
“I ate the day / Deliberately”
Consumption as conscious act. Taking in world/experience.
Form
Free verse with careful sonic patterning. Enjambment creates flow.
Themes
Context
Heaney in comfortable academic position while Troubles rage. Oysters = luxury, but also ‘bred in slime’. Poem about guilt of artist/intellectual during violence.
Comparison with Sheers (AO4)
Both poets explore the ethics of aesthetic pleasure during or after violence.
Other Key Poems
After a Killing
Violence’s aftermath. Ambiguity of perpetrator/survivor.
A Postcard from North Antrim
Pastoral beauty interrupted by sectarian division.
Badgers
Nocturnal creatures; hidden lives; connection to land.
Otter
Wife as otter; sleek, mysterious, aquatic. Sensual, beautiful.
Skunk
Wife returning home at night = skunk approaching. Unexpected tenderness.
September Song
Autumn; aging and decline. Time passing.
Polder
Dutch reclaimed land; human control over nature. Metaphor for poetry-making?