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32 | Péter Dolmanyos
Heaney’s attempt of framing it in a broadly encompassing mythic halo that
could offer, if not an explanation, but a tentative interpretational ground
for the violent present. As a result, the dedicatory poems reflect a readjusted
image of the family farm, one that dispenses with those earlier highlighted
elements that depicted the reality of farm life without idealisation, and the
resulting new representation restores a more explicit pastoral potential to
the place in retrospect. In this way the recalled and subsequently reconsid¬
ered and reassessed world of the family home appears to reflect the evolution
of the poet’s focus of attention and understanding in the form of a revised
sense of experience, that of the travelled adult spectator forging a rekindled
sense of affection in place of his earlier objectivity. The pattern of representa¬
tion, however, remains the same as in the earlier poems as the place is evoked
through a limited set of phenomena and ritual-like actions rather than proper
descriptive details, suggesting the same approach in terms of sense of place as
in his previous accounts of Mossbawn life.
Glanmore is approached in a more complex way as there is an explicitly
self-conscious element in linking it to literary precedents. Heaney’s residence
in the cottage evokes parallels with his rural upbringing but it also highlights
the difference of the experience as the adult poet is compelled to face a dif¬
ferent set of responsibilities in that environment. The echoes of the poet’s
childhood world are deliberately recalled to function as potential points of
reference to assess the new experience but the adult’s reflective approach re¬
sults in a less spontaneous effect in his sense of the place. Moreover, his in¬
clusion of literary references suggests a wish to affiliate his experience with a
broader learned tradition, which points towards the second way of knowing
and cherishing a place that he outlines in the essay. All the Glanmore poems
represent a carefully contemplated and strongly allusive response to the place
that originates partly from the time of the composition of the poems: the
“Glanmore Sonnets” in Field Work were written when the poet was already a
Dublin resident after his spell in Glanmore, whereas the sequence “Glanmore
Revisited” in Seeing Things was composed when the poet acquired the cottage
as his own property for the purpose of a holiday home, an occasion that fos¬
tered reflection on his earlier experience of the place in the light of his altered
relation to it. With this approach, Heaney’s Glanmore becomes a literary con¬
struct that arises out of a “learned, literary and conscious””’ relation with the
contemplated location.'*
The place name poems of the volume Wintering Out employ the names of the
locations in question in their titles and thus suggest direct concern with place.
While the places are thus explicitly marked, these poems focus principally on
the names themselves and seem to detach them from the respective locations,
consequently the places referred to do not become properly presented ones.
Although “Anahorish”, “Toome” and “Broagh” contain some items that belong
2 Heaney, Preoccupations, 131
13 the essay “Heaney’s Glanmores — Almost Pastoral (?)” provides a detailed assessment of the Glan¬
more motif in Heaney’s poetry