From the Frontier of Writing
The tightness and the nilness round that space
when the car stops in the road, the troops inspect
its make and number and, as one bends his face
towards your window, you catch sight of more
on a hill beyond, eyeing with intent
down cradled guns that hold you under cover
and everything is pure interrogation
until a rifle motions and you move
with guarded unconcerned acceleration --
a little emptier, a little spent
as always by that quiver in the self,
subjugated, yes, and obedient.
So you drive on to the frontier of writing
where it happens again. The guns on tripods;
the sergeant with his on-off mike repeating
data about you, waiting for the squawk
of clearance; the marksman training down
out of the sun upon you like a hawk.
And suddenly you're through, arraigned yet freed,
as if you'd passed from behind a waterfall
on the black current of a tarmac road
past armor-plated vehicles, out between
the posted soldiers flowing and receding
like tree shadows into the polished windscreen.
Commentary
Another favourite of mine. Exquisity Heaney: compact, compressed, beautifully simple yet spiralling with meaning upon meaning. Here an unfortunately commonplace event - a road check - is compared to the act of writing, or perhaps the struggle of the act of writing. Again fraught with tension, “pure interrogation”, the poem captures the mood, the silent watchfulness of a politically unstable area. There are various interpretations of this poem and I personally find it difficult to pinpoint what the Frontier of Writing is – is it a space (mental or physical), an idea or the act of writing itself? When I reach the last few lines however, it doesn’t even seem to matter – “out between / the posted soldiers flowing and receding / like tree shadows into the polished windscreen”. It is an image that is startling and stays with me.
Hope you enjoy it!
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From the Wondering Minstrels mailing list, 1999–2008.
Valerie Clarke · 18 January 2006
This reminded me vividly of a morning in 1987. We were living in Spain at the time, but on holiday in Ireland – in County Cavan, which is in the Republic. Thinking to buy cheaper petrol, we travelled the short distance to County Fermanagh, which is in
Northern Ireland, UK. The countryside doesn’t change, we still travelled along the same dreamy little country lane, but suddenly there was a check point, and soldiers peering in at us, guns at the ready, suspicious about our left hand drive car and our funny number plates.
He was so young, the soldier who questioned us, like a child with a toy gun pretending to be aggressive. However, when he learned we lived near Benidorm his young face relaxed and he was eager to tell us his Auntie Jean had a pub in Benidorm!
Of course we went in and out again from Northern Ireland without problems, but it was unsettling, and when my husband was asked indirectly whether he was Catholic or Protestant as he ordered a beer in a pub, we headed back to Cavan pretty smartly.
Seamus Heaney hits the nail on the head.
Leslie Hansen · 20 July 2006
Reading this poem for the first time, I think it is very powerful. Seamus Heaney introduces a complelling description of a very realistic and personal frontier (a checkpoint with armed soldiers), and then builds a metaphor for the “frontier of writing”.
I think the “frontier of writing” relates back to the cathatric power of writing. We now know from scientific studies involving victims or witnesses to crimes or serious accidents that repeating a traumatic experience - whether verbally, in writing, in visual art or in re-enactment - can trigger the same physiological or biochemical responses as the original experience. Writing, as a creative expression, can allow us to absorb, defuse and integrate traumatic experiences.
I beleive that the “frontier of writing” in this poem represents the boundary where an artist chooses to relive a painful or disturbing expereince throught the act of writing.
The first four stanzas of the poem are a description of the original experience (being stopped at gunpoint at a checkpoint). The experience described is intense in a depersonalized way- “tightensss and nilness”, “pure interrogation”, until “a rifle motions” and the writer moves on with “guarded unconcerned accelleration –”.
In the next (fourth) stanza the writer is released, to “drive on to the frontier of writing / where it happens again. “It” happens again in the fifth and sixth stanzas, which extend andn personalize the original experience to include details that couldn’t have been seen at the time, but would likely have been feared - the “guns on tripods”, the seargeant calling in for “data about you”, “marksmen training down upon you out of the sun like a hawk”.
And then, for the writer at least, “Suddenly you’re through…”, through the waterfall of sheer releif, doubly potent because you now know the full extent of the dangers that you’ve passed - experienced, seen, unseen and imagined. The “black current of tarmac road” gives no guarantee of safety but at least provides increasing distance, and in reliving the experiences through this poem, we can start to build our own armour; we’ll acknowlege the reality of the armoured vehicles, but begin to see the soldiers as “tree shadows” and so start to move back into the perceptions that are necesary to enable everyday life.
Thank you for posting and sharing this poem.
Gerard Stafleu · 22 March 2007
It is at least a place where Seamus Heaney occasionally finds himself. He writes something new, how will it be received? Will the ever-ready critics shoot it down with their “cradled guns that hold you under cover”? Or will they give it a pass, casually motioning with their rifles? You can leave the frontier by, zen-like, no longer attaching importance to it. The soldiers and their rifles then disappear, flowing like shadows into your windscreen.
Gerard Stafleu
Gerard Stafleu
Information Technology Services
The University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario, Canada
Victa iacet pietas, et virgo caede madentis
ultima caelestum terras Astraea reliquit.
Decency lies shattered and Justice, still unsullied, is last of the eternal principles to seek refuge in the heavens.