Patient: The Underground by Seamus Heaney
Over on my Substack, I have this series called Poetry Postmortem. The purpose of it is to help people understand poetry analysis. I pick a poem and break it down in a non-academic way, reintroducing the heart into it. While teachers dissect, they neglect to put the organs back. Number 7 is the most recent edition. If you enjoy these, let me know in the comments!
For those who love the weaving of language, the knitting of speech, will be no stranger to the great Seamus Heaney. The first of nine children, Heaney was born on the 13th of April, 1939. The first thing he saw was Mossbawn, the family farmhouse. A staunch Irishman, he carried his hometown of Tamniaran through his life like a latchkey. Heaney claims he first discovered he wanted to write poetry when he picked up a copy of Ted Hughes’ Lupercal (an ancient Roman festival of purification and fertility). Heaney’s first collection, Death of a Naturalist, faced fairly positive reviews. In said collection, he presented many of the ideas borne out of The Belfast Group, a writer’s workshop spearheaded by Philip Hobsbaum.
The Underground—the poem we’ll be discussing today—comes from Heaney’s 1984 collection, Station Island. There were many poems I almost chose for the purpose, but I found this one particularly intriguing. We can really get our teeth into this poem. A task such as this one should be viewed through the eyes of a solver. A poem is its own puzzle. When you’re at school, a coffee-breathed teacher grabs you by the hair and steers you toward one specific meaning, ensuring that you understand you are overruled. The art of analysis is delicate; if misused it can put you off for life.
If we begin with the title, we can see how such a simple one can convey so many ideas. There is the literal meaning of the underground system—where one gets from A to B. What is another word for “under”? If you said “bottom,” or something vaguely similar, you would be correct. We associate being at the bottom with negative feelings such as jealousy, misguided ambition, and depression. Now let’s separate the word “underground”. We have added the word “ground,” which we could associate with soil, concrete, and gravity. When you glue these elements back together, you might have a picture of what the poem is about to say.
The first stanza reels us in with a stomping rhythm: “There-we-were / in the / vaulted-tunnel-running.” The speaker establishes the location right away. He also tells us that he is not alone in what he describes. While a vault is a kind of tunnel, “to vault” means to spring. This adds further to the quickening pace of the poem and its subjects. To say “tunnelling,” could refer to a journey towards something greater. Just like a train journey, the poem decreases in pace from time to time. “You / in / your / going-away / coat / speeding ahead,” is far slower than we began. Heaney provides us with some information on our subject. We now understand they wear a particular coat for “going away”. The concluding lines, “And me / me then like a fleet god gaining / Upon you before you turned to a reed,” provide the reader with allusion. Heaney is referencing Pan, the God of nature. After returning from her hunt, the wood-nymph of Arcadia, Syrinx, stumbled upon Pan who was insistent on his advancements. To evade him, she was turned into a reed by her sisters. By using this myth, Seamus Heaney gives us a clue as to the potential meaning of this poem.
The second stanza begins much like the first one, with a kind of staccato rhythm: “Or / some-new-white-flower / japped with crimson.” The word “japped” means a splatter, therefore we can only but assume the “crimson splatter” might refer to blood. However, given the lines before it, this could be a reference to lipstick. Heaney writes, “As the coat flapped wide and button after button / Sprang off and fell in a trail,” telling us that not only is the poem moving, but our subjects are too. We see Pan’s myth play out in a modern setting. The last line establishes a precise location: “Between the Underground and the Albert Hall.” The Royal Albert Hall is in South Kensington, London. Illustrating this kind of information enables the reader to place themselves directly into the poem. For myself, I have been to these places, so I can throw myself into the tapestry.
In the second stanza, the line, “Honeymooning, moonlighting / late from the Proms,” not only re-establishes the location, but it provides an opposite image. We associate honeymoons with weddings and love, but we associate moonlighting with pretending to be someone else. This gives us something to question. Has the subject been cheating? Is our speaker stalking our subject? In the next line, Heaney shows us that the speaker recognises his actions as futile: “Our echoes die in that corridor and now / I come as Hansel came on the moonlit stones / retracing the path back / lifting the buttons.” Incorporating another tale into this poem, the image of a man looking hopelessly at what is left of his run-away lover is fresh in our minds.
The concluding stanza is arguably the most difficult for any poet. It is the final lick of paint—the bow on a gift. The Underground is a poem that ends with a reluctant defeat, not just for the speaker, but for the writer. As a poet, I can sympathise with the feeling of ending a poem. “To end up in a draughty lamplit station / After the trains have gone, the wet track / Bared and tensed as I am, all attention / For your step following and damned if I look back.” Somewhat wounded, the subject is left standing in the station. He is alone with but the hope to hear the subject’s footsteps one last time.
Now we have dug into the poem’s individual make-up, we must put it back together. As a whole, I might argue that The Underground is a poem about a love who doesn’t want to know. What is key in poetry analysis is understanding what the poet is trying to convey. For this particular poem, we are lucky enough to have Seamus Heaney himself tell us his intentions. An article in The Guardian details an evening from the night before (18th March 2009), in which he chose two poems to portray his entire career.
Speaking about the poem we just analysed, The Guardian wrote,
“But he decided instead to plump for The Underground, which sees he and his wife “Honeymooning, moonlighting, late for the Proms”, running down the corridor from the underground to the Royal Albert Hall, Heaney imagining himself as an Orpheus who won’t look back, and therefore keeps his bride. “Marie and I were then on our honeymoon and as well as calling with my editor in Russell Square, we went to a Promenade concert in the Albert Hall, by the underground, of course, Marie in her white going away coat that had received a beetroot stain in the Museum Tavern the night before, both of us late and running down the corridor,” Heaney said, telling guests he was reading it “in gratitude for all that London and the people I have known in London have given by way of literary inspiration and confirmation.”
Heaney’s intentions are in total opposition to what we discussed. This should be encouraged because there will always be a certain disconnect between the author, their work, and the reader. However, knowing exactly what he was going for helps us inextricably. Where we discussed the potential of blood and lipstick, Heaney was actually referring to his wife’s white coat that had been stained by beetroot the night before. Discovering authorial intent allows us as readers to compare our findings to the poet’s. Ultimately, a poem will mean something different to all, and that goes for the multiple readings you might commit to. There might be a particular Historical context that elevates the piece to new heights. Meaning is like the ocean: the tide may come in and go back out, but we will never know what is at its core.
Courtenay's Corner 