Chapter 2 - Renewing the Ordinary

Summary

Chapter Two follows the chronology of Heaney’s first three collections of poetry, paying attention to early drafts of select poems and Heaney’s own critical commentary in his prose and interviews. I begin by drawing attention to several of the ‘Group’ poems, where Heaney engages with his early religious experience, before moving on to look at a number of poems in Death of a Naturalist which demonstrate the sensuous and tactile appeal of Catholicism for Heaney. I argue that Heaney’s attention to the physicality of the body in Death of a Naturalist is consistent with the body as a unique good in Christian theology. I develop this argument in my discussion of ‘The Forge’ from Door into the Dark, where manual labour is consecrated, and in my discussion of several other poems, whose vocabulary is rich in sacramental language. Finally, I turn to the sacramentality of place in the poems of Wintering Out, and to the ritualized way of life which grounds many of the poems in that collection. I conclude with a discussion of ‘The Tollund Man’ which announces the poems of Heaney’s next collection, North.