The Writings of Seamus Heaney

"Digging"

"Digging" by Seamus Heaney is a poem about writer who comes from a family of potato farmers and doesn't want to follow in his father or grandfather's footsteps. The title refers to the narrator trying to discover what he wants to do with writing, now he's realized he doesn't want to be a potato farmer like his family. This poem is an argument that writing is just as important as farming and takes a lot of work as well. The narrator tells us, "I've got no spade to follow men like them," and he wants to "dig" with his way into the world with his pen rather than a shovel to make a name for himself. He compares the planting of potatoes to his own writing process.
Heaney uses many alliterations such as, "spade sinks into gravelly ground" and "tall tops," "sloppily with paper," "buried the bright edge deep," and "down and down." He uses "nicking and slicing" as an assonance, describing what his family does to potatoes and what he does in his writing process. Some of the verses rhyme and some are free verse, possibly a nod to the formality of the farming he wants to break away from.

"Englands of the Mind"

In Seamus Heaney's essay, "Englands of the Mind," Heaney describes three steps writers such as Ted Hughes and Philip Larkin need to have in order to be successful writers in his mind. As writers, according to Heaney, must represent a true portrayal of their country, culture, and language of England.
As a setting for their writing, England is very important as a realistic foundation of the writer's own history and culture to describe through language. Heaney says they "treat England as a region- or rather treat their region as England in different and complementary ways." Hughes describes England as "a primeval landscape" and Larkin describes England as a reflection "from the period that his language is hived off." It seems like Hughes's England is more focused on the natural aspects of the country while Larkin is more realistic. They have a lot of previous generations of writers and poets to live up to.
Each writer is measured by the difficulty and creativeness of their language with their message getting through to their readers. Heaney argues that both Hughes and Larkin as writers have "the auditory imagination," using metaphors and figurative language to describe England and their individual images of nature and reality. Hughes is "the rightful heir to alliterative traditions," using figurative language for animals, nature, and Christian stories. Larkin's language has a "bright sense of words worn clean in literate conversation," but is considerably different from Hughes.
Hughes "attempts to make vocal the inner life, the simple being-thereness," trying to tap into the narrator's inner dialogue and natural surroundings in his poems. Larkin's narrations are about "a real man in a real place," making him a realist not trying to sugarcoat his messages to us. Larkin is blunt and uses profanity through out his writings, which is very different from Hughes, who hints at similar topics but through the art of storytelling. Heaney seems to believe each author's writings are greatly executed, no matter what their style and uses of language are, as well as giving an accurate description of England.