The Forge by Seamus Heaney

The poem is written in free verse, offers no type of rhyme scheme, and in one long stanza. This contributes to

The most visually noticeable part of this poem is the format. It isn’t written in familiar stanzas with any kind of meter or complex

The poem does not follow a rhyme scheme or meter, which means that there is rhythm in the poem and it makes the poem more like a song. The poem has four stanza’s and has five lines within each stanza.

Spaulding begins her essay with a detailed personal testimony that describes the deep emotional connection she feels for darkness. In part of the second paragraph she states, “the sky and shore and water were all one inky darkness though stars sparkled on the watery surface,” (83). This description of the

First element that Heaney uses is diction, it is simple but effective. Diction is word choice, or the style of speaking that a writer, speaker, or character uses. For instance at the end of the poem he says “Between my finger and my thumb / The squat pen rests. / I’ll dig with it” (Heaney 29-31). The diction he uses is simple but it is effective in proving his point of view that he won’t dig with a shovel but instead he’ll use a pen.

He uses this in the poem to give it rhythm to engage the reader and

The reader experiences euphoria and extreme amusement reading the entire poem which flows in a very stupefy way. But, it also promotes

The main themes of Edgar Allan Poe’s works are death, perversity, revenge and destruction. The settings he employed in the given short stories, especially in The Fall of the House of Usher and The Black Cat are Gothic. Therefore, naturally the mood of these stories would be dark and sepulchral. However, this is not a trivial employment undertaken to put the reader in a certain kind of zone.

In today’s modern view, poetry has become more than just paragraphs that rhyme at the end of each sentence. If the reader has an open mind and the ability to read in between the lines, they discover more than they have bargained for. Some poems might have stories of suffering or abuse, while others contain happy times and great joy. Regardless of what the poems contains, all poems display an expression. That very moment when the writer begins his mental journey with that pen and paper is where all feelings are let out. As poetry is continues to be written, the reader begins to see patterns within each poem. On the other hand, poems have nothing at all in common with one another. A good example of this is in two poems by a famous writer by

This book review is on Guns, Germs and Steel, by Jared Diamond. The book was very interesting but a lot of the information could have been cut because it’s a bit too long. Jared Diamond is a scientist, not a historian and he’s American. He upset many historians around the world by the way he bashes Europeans. However, he did win a Pulitzer Prize for the book so that says something.

This poignant dichotomy is seen explicitly in two poems in Seamus Heaney’s Field Work. One poem, “The Strand at Lough Beg” is written for “Heaney’s cousin Colum McCartney (ambushed and shot in a sectarian killing)” and is rich with pastoral scenery, dark tones, and religious imagery (Vendler 60). Another poem, “A Postcard from North Antrim” is about “his friend the social worker Sean Armstrong (shot by a ‘pointblank teatime bullet’)” (Vendler 60). These two elegies, both with a strong presence of Heaney’s personal voice, are imbued with a sort of ambiguity as Heaney struggles with the death of two people who were both very close to him. In both poems, Heaney “tries to converse with and question the dead” in an attempt to rationalize, or at least display his sentiments on the untimely deaths (Parker 159). It is interesting to watch Heaney oscillate in imagery, tone and diction as he progresses through both poems. This wavering can be seen as a result of Heaney’s background.

poem is not merely a static, decorative creation, but that it is an act of communication between the poet and

The poem begins with two lines which are repeated throughout the poem which convey what the narrator is thinking, they represent the voice in

The central theme of all Gothic novels is the presence and symbolism of the Gothic castle. Depiction of ruinous abbeys, monasteries, subterranean passages, vaults, secret panels, and the trapdoors is a standard method of achieving the atmosphere. Howells sees the Gothic castle as being ‘a shadowy world of ruins and twilight scenery lit up from time to time by lurid flashes of passion and violence ’(6). Therefore, the gloominess of the exterior and interior environment is illuminated by intense emotional and passionate moments of the characters that inhabit the castle. As Sage claims, the castle is ‘the lair of the villain’(166), and it is an accurate reflection of his dark and frightening character. Gloomy, dark, and dangerous, the castle reflects the emotions and psychological experience of many of the novel’s characters.