The Strand at Lough Beg – Seamus Heaney, pt. #3

Last month, I commented on Heaney’s “The Strand at Lough Beg.” A university teacher at Tsurumi, Yokohama writes in to raise this question:

I’m interested in his reading of The Strand at Lough Beg, followed by the poem in Station Island which follows on from that.  I would like to know how he prefaced the poems.  Actually, you explain this already, but I was wondering what Heaney said about Colum McCartney, the subject of both poems,  as a person.  Did Heaney give the impression that he knew McCartney well, for example?  Or was that everyone’s assumption anyway?  Also, in prefacing the Station Island piece on McCartney, did Heaney talk of any sense of guilt per se, guilt at portraying the victim in the earlier poem in a stylized way, or guilt for any other reason?

A complex question. If you’re not familiar with “The Strand at Lough Beg,” (rough pronunciation guide: Loff Bay) it is included in Field Work, while the other is the title piece from Station Island. The latter poem first appeared in the Hudson Review [accessible if you subscribe to JSTOR].  Both deal with the poet’s cousin, Colum McCartney, who was assassinated by the IRA in Aug. 1975.  In “Station Island,” the cousin accuses Heaney of capitalizing on his death for poetry’s sake, and then not even attending the funeral:

You were there with poets when you got the word
and stayed there with them, while your own flesh and blood
was carted to Bellaghy from the Fews.
They showed more agitation at the news
than you did.

Heaney read “The Strand at Lough Beg” following “A Constable Calls,” which was, for me, a high point of the lecture. With the poem’s closing “ticked, ticked, ticked,” he created a moment that brought personal, familial concerns to the audience with a directness I’ve rarely encountered. Poetry at it’s best. As a result, when he moved next to “The Strand at Lough Beg,” my mind still paused on “A Constable Calls.” Take that as my caveat.

Heaney said the poem’s subject was slightly less close than an actual cousin – the son of a cousin of his father’s. I’m not genealogist enough to tell you whether that’s removed or second. McCartney was “family” in a broad sense – not exactly a close friend or even acquaintance. Perhaps known, but not on a personal level. Distant enough that he did not feel obligated to attend the funeral just so long as others in his immediate family did.

The salient point is that Heaney admires “The Strand at Lough Beg” enough that he read it among the dozen or so poems picked from his career. After reading it, he acknowledged (these are direct quotes) there might be “theoretical problems” of “aestheticized violence.” It was a strange moment – Heaney spoke to a generalist audience, unlikely to be aware of the longstanding controversy surrounding the poem. Yet he highlighted these criticisms, his own personal criticisms of the work, before moving on to “Station Island,” which at times meditates on his apprehension towards those tensions.

In the earlier post, I wrote that Heaney “resurrected” his cousin in “Station Island.” Looking back on it, I don’t know if that’s entirely accurate. The cousin appears and speaks in a way that doesn’t occur in “The Strand at Lough Beg” – but I wouldn’t call “Station Island” a resurrection. The cousin here is instead the poet’s conscience, challenging the poet to write and think about private moments more honestly. He did not express guilt, and none was needed. It was a reminder that, even for a poet as rooted in fundamental morality as Heaney, writing public poetry about private matters is difficult terrain.

A secondary point, but worth mentioning: “The Strand at Lough Beg” comes from Field Work, a collection full of elegies and meditations for the passed. “Triptych: After A Killing,” “The Strand at Lough Beg: In Memory of Colum McCartney,” “A Postcard from North Antrim: In Memory of Sean Armstrong,” “Casualty,” “In Memoriam Sean O’Riada,” “Elegy,” “In Memoriam Francis Ledwidge: Killed in France 31 July 1917,” among others. During the lecture, Heaney commented that the purpose of an elegy is (directly quoting his words) “to resurrect the dead in a benign landscape.” In Field Work, “The Strand at Lough Beg” is in good company among many such “resurrections.”

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