Poet, Seamus Heaney Focuses on the Simple Joys of Life

For the poetry unit, I decided to study the works of the renowned Irish poet, critic, and recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995, Seamus Heaney. I choose Heaney because he is rather contemporary author, most of his works published in the mid to late twentieth century, and his poems were simple yet beautiful. The voice that he uses to spin his tales is fundamentally human. In my opinion, Heaney does not put on fronts of human perfection, but chooses to focus on the simple joys that life provides. This can be seen in many of his poems such as “Lover of Aran”, in which he gives human characteristics to the beach and the sea to exemplify human love and compassion, as well as in “Personal Helicon”, where he harps on the beauty and simplicity of his childhood. He also wrote darker pieces such as “Act of Union” and “Docker”. “Act of Union” is appropriately named after the document that brought all of England’s conquests under the crown of Great Britain. The poem focuses on the political turmoil, between England and Ireland as it depicts an invasion of Irish soil. “Docker” speak...