The Harvest Bow
- Created by: Harleym7000
- Created on: 07-04-18 15:21
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- The Harvest Bow
- This beautiful tender poem is taken from Heaney’s collection Field Work(1979). In a way it is fitting that I’m publishing this blog post on Father’s Day because this poem explores the close relationship between Seamus Heaney the poet and Patrick Heaney his father
- Heaney’s Mossbawn poems contain numerous references to family members; his mother, his Aunt Mary, his grandfather, his brother and his father who is mentioned most notably in the poem ‘Digging’ but also in ‘Follower’ and other poems.
- Heaney’s poetry contains many references to dying rural crafts and traditions and the harvest bow in one such tradition.
- The bow was fashioned from freshly cut straw and often given by the maker as a token of love. Here it is silently fashioned by the father and given to his son, ‘a throwaway love-knot of straw’.
- Heaney’s poetry contains many references to dying rural crafts and traditions and the harvest bow in one such tradition.
- Heaney’s Mossbawn poems contain numerous references to family members; his mother, his Aunt Mary, his grandfather, his brother and his father who is mentioned most notably in the poem ‘Digging’ but also in ‘Follower’ and other poems.
- Patrick Heaney emerges as a strong, no-nonsense, unsentimental country man who strides through his fields ‘whacking the tips off weeds and bushes’. He is a man of few words, a man ‘tongue-tied’ who prefers to express himself in actions rather than words.
- Like Barney Devlin in ‘The Forge’ or the ploughman in ‘Follower’ or his grandfather in ‘Digging’, who ‘cut more turf in a day/ than any other man on Toner’s bog’, Heaney sees his father as a craftsman teaching the young poet-to-be that the artist expresses himself through his work. Heaney sees in his father’s attention to detail the attitude he wishes to bring to his own work as a poet.
- The poem is a tender exploration of the father/son relationship and it is clear that an unspoken understanding grows between them and is expressed through the gift of the harvest bow, which is being fashioned by the father as they both stroll together through the fields of stubble on an Autumn evening.
- The poet fingers the harvest bow and reads it ‘like braille … gleaning the unsaid off the palpable’. He then translates what he has read for us and puts it into words which he fashions and plaits and weaves into a poem.
- This poem was published in 1979 at the height of the Northern ‘Troubles’ and it sees Heaney retreating again to a happy childhood memory to erase the pain of the daily catalogue of shootings and bombings.
- The motto used at the beginning of the final stanza, ‘The end of art is peace’, therefore, is rich in meaning and open to many interpretations. The obvious one is that father and son have achieved a moment of peace and harmony via their respective crafts and of course it has wider political implications also in the context of the continuing conflict in Northern Ireland.
- Many commentators at the time accused Heaney of not taking sides, of not highlighting the atrocities of those dark days. Maybe they have not delved deeply enough into his Mossbawn poems and elsewhere?
- The harvest bow is a symbol of the love and understanding that has developed between the father and son, it is a ‘love-knot’ which joins them together. The poet remembers those evening rambles with his father through the cornfields and we are struck by the juxtaposition offered us:
- Many commentators at the time accused Heaney of not taking sides, of not highlighting the atrocities of those dark days. Maybe they have not delved deeply enough into his Mossbawn poems and elsewhere?
- The motto used at the beginning of the final stanza, ‘The end of art is peace’, therefore, is rich in meaning and open to many interpretations. The obvious one is that father and son have achieved a moment of peace and harmony via their respective crafts and of course it has wider political implications also in the context of the continuing conflict in Northern Ireland.
- This poem was published in 1979 at the height of the Northern ‘Troubles’ and it sees Heaney retreating again to a happy childhood memory to erase the pain of the daily catalogue of shootings and bombings.
- The poet fingers the harvest bow and reads it ‘like braille … gleaning the unsaid off the palpable’. He then translates what he has read for us and puts it into words which he fashions and plaits and weaves into a poem.
- The harvest bow can also be seen as an emblem of rural life and agricultural labour. As I’ve mentioned earlier this poem was written during the ‘Troubles’ in his home place and this has a deep, disturbing effect on the poet.
- Time and time again he retreats to the safety and womb-like comfort of his Aunt Mary’s kitchen in Mossbawn in an effort to seek some solace and comfort. There is something deeply psychological and human about this regression of the poet.
- He leaves us with this sharp contrast. The harvest bow is an endearing and enduring symbol of love, a vestige of a long tradition that has been handed down through the generations, yet the poet is forced to live in a society riven with sectarianism and divisions and the annual ‘harvest’ of the dreaded Marching Season, year in year out.
- Time and time again he retreats to the safety and womb-like comfort of his Aunt Mary’s kitchen in Mossbawn in an effort to seek some solace and comfort. There is something deeply psychological and human about this regression of the poet.
- This beautiful tender poem is taken from Heaney’s collection Field Work(1979). In a way it is fitting that I’m publishing this blog post on Father’s Day because this poem explores the close relationship between Seamus Heaney the poet and Patrick Heaney his father
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