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Seamus Heaney, "Mid-Term Break"

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Author/Narrator

It is very difficult to separate the author from the narrator, especially when a poem is in the first person or when you know the author has experienced something similar. Nevertheless, they are two entirely different people: one real and one fictional. To help you see the difference, read this very good description of separating the author from the narrator even when events in their lives are comparable.

In "A General Introduction for My Work," William Butler Yeats writes about the difference between the author's experience and the fictional character's experience:

A poet writes always of his personal life, in his finest work out of its tragedy, whatever it be, remorse, lost love, or mere loneliness; he never speaks directly as to someone at the breakfast table, there is always a phantasmagoria. Dante and Milton had mythologies, Shakespeare the characters of English history or romance; even when the poet seems most himself, when he is Raleigh and gives potentates the lie, or Shelley "a nerve o'er which do creep the else unfelt oppressions of this earth," or Byron when "the soul wears out the breast" as "the sword outwears its sheath," he is never the bundle of accident and incoherence that sits down to breakfast; he has been reborn as an idea, something intended, complete. A novelist might describe his accidence, his incoherence, he must not; he is more type than man, more passion than type. . . . He is part of his own phantasmagoria . . .

When Heaney was younger, his little brother died. This article on the relationship between his real-life tragedy and the narrator's tragedy should help you to distinguish between the two. Examine the poem and try to differentiate between what Heaney experienced in his youth and what the narrator experiences in the poem. Although there are similarities, they are two entirely different people. What are the similarities and differences?

Grief

Grief at the loss of a sibling is described in this article, while this information from a counseling service reveals the effect of the loss of a sibling on a college student. This poem, "Loss of a Sibling," describes the pain of dealing with the loss, and the hope that follows. This article describes the effects on a person if the loss is traumatic or sudden. Part of the beauty of poetry is the author's ability to crystallize profound thoughts into few words. After reading these articles about grief, re-read the poem and describe how Heaney incorporated many of the ideas you learned from these articles into the poem. Use lines, images, and specific words to illustrate your points.

Heaney on Poetry

In 1995, Seamus Heaney won the Nobel Prize for Literature. "Crediting Poetry" is the lecture he gave at the award ceremony. You can both read and listen to it. From a series of articles in the Boston Globe entitled "Heaney Ponders the Power of Poetry," you can read about his reasons for writing poetry as well as the differences between being a poet and being a POET, a result of fame after winning the Nobel Prize. Pick any one of twenty-seven of his poems and apply to it a few of the ideas that Heaney discusses in these articles.

Themes

This list of themes in and quotations from Heaney's work is organized alphabetically and will help you to generate ideas for writing essays, whether you wish to choose a theme that you discuss through several poems or whether you use a quotation to generate an essay about social issues.

Context

Read the poems "Punishment" and "Funeral Rites" and then the article, "Seamus Heaney's Poetry and its Exploration of the Irish Troubles and the Human Experience," by Clinton Jasper, which discusses the context of Heaney's work. If a contemporary American poet wrote about the war in Iraq and the moral division of the American people on the issue, what do you think the poems would be like? You could try your hand at writing a four-line poem.

Fun

Seamus Heaney's Top Hip Hop Picks. It's either a marvelous imitation of his style or the real thing. Now that you've read "Mid-term Break" several times and other poems from the list of twenty-seven, you must have a feel for his style. Pick three popular recording artists and write similar blurbs about them in Heaney's style.

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