Requiem for the Croppies

I like this poem because of the images it includes. They are very striking. The first is of the ‘greatcoats full of barley’, this represents the Irish as the barley straight away links us to wheat, farmers and fields. Automatically it gives us a picture of poor farmers that all only have enough money to buy themselves a single greatcoat in which they have to keep all there is of their food. The next picturesque image is ‘The hillside blushed, soaked in our broken wave.’ This line depicts the abnormal amount of blood shed during this war. Heaney’s use of the colour red also brings a sense of death and anger to the sad poem. Lastly, the final image and line is ‘And in August… the barely grew up out of our grave’. This sediment of the poem is most touching as again we remember the Irish, their poverty and their sad position in power. The ellipsis in the sentence brings more drama and emphasis into the poem. All these images united create one great and memorable poem.

Seamus Heaney is one of the best poets that I have studied so far and I have no doubt he was one of the best that there were in Ireland as well. His smart use of imagery, word choice and structure all added to his genius poems, which, when read, took the reader’s breath away. His poems all sounded like a beautiful stream, peacefully flowing through the ground. When you read them, no matter if it was for the first or hundredth time it would still amaze you with it’s astonishing sound. Heaney was a great poet and he will be forever remembered in Ireland.

By Y. Mikulchyk.