![]() ![]() ![]() We feature this poem in our pick of the best poems about work.įrom Heaney’s 1996 collection The Spirit Level, ‘Two Lorries’ reveals what a master of poetic form Seamus Heaney was, as he offers his take on the sestina (where the words at the ends of the lines in each stanza are the same from one stanza to the next), a difficult form to pull off. But the pen is, by comparison, no weapon – yes, as the proverb has it, the pen is mightier than the sword (or the gun or the spade). A gun is a weapon associated with ‘manly’ ideas of war (however misguidedly) a spade is associated with honest manual labour, such as that performed by the poet’s father and grandfather. The poem’s structure is significant not least in the fact that it almost goes full-circle: Heaney begins with the pen in his hand, ‘snug as a gun’ – a suggestive simile, especially given the complementarity of ‘snug’ and the word it spells when reversed, ‘guns’. Heaney resolves to use his pen as his digging implement, and to perform a different kind of excavation from that practised by his forefathers. ‘Digging’ is about a poet-son’s relationship with his father and the sense that the working-class son, by choosing the vocation of the poet, is adopting a path very different from his father’s, and his father’s before him. ![]()
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