"Churning Day"

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses how, on the surface, the poem by Nobel Prize Laureate Seamus Heaney called "Churning Day", is a wonderful journey into the past, into the old ways of making butter when technology and the corporate world were far from becoming part of Europe. The paper looks at how the poem is both a history lesson and a reflection of Heaney's agricultural upbringing. It also shows how the poem is in a very real way a testament to his sharp eye and attentive ears towards the culture in rural Ireland in which he grew up.

From the Paper:

"In the poem it is clear that Heaney sees his boyhood old-world family lifestyle as a metaphor, and all the things that were part of those experiences are building blocks for his storytelling. But he shows how highly intelligent he is by his strategic use of words - just enough descriptiveness and emotion. Still, he does not let the tools of poetry overpower the poem. As a poet he has the license to pour forth with images and metaphors, but he handles this poem with grace, the same as his family handled the chores of making food with grace and deliberation. His poetry is, according to The New York Times, "...accomplished, predictable" (Unterecker, 1967). "

Sample of Sources Used:

• Heaney, Seamus. "Churning Day." Death of a Naturalist. Ed. Seamus Heaney. New York: Oxford University Press, 1966,
• Heaney, Seamus. "Nobel Lecture: Crediting Poetry." Nobelprize.org. Retrieved 4 Feb. 2007 From http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1995/heaney-lecture.html.
• Unterecker, John. "Songs of Loss." The New York Times 26 March 1967, retrieved 4 Feb. 2007 from http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/12/20/specials/heaney-loss.html.

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