The Rattle Bag: An Anthology of Poetry: 1

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Seamus Heaney was born in 1939 in County Derry in Northern Ireland. He grew up in the country, on a farm, in touch with a traditional rural way of life, which he wrote about in his first book Death of a Naturalist (1966). He attended the local school and in 1951 went as a boarder to St Columb's College, about 40 miles away in Derry (the poem 'Singing School' in North refers to this period of his life). In 1956 he went on a scholarship to Queen's University, Belfast and graduated with a first class degree in English Language and Literature in 1961. After a year as a post-graduate at a college of education, and a year teaching in a secondary modern school in Ballymurphy, he was appointed to the staff of St Joseph's College of Education. In 1966 Seamus Heaney took up a lecturing post in the English Department of Queen's University, and remained there until 1972, spending the academic year 1970-71 as a visiting Professor at the University of California in Berkeley. I can't help but wonder if all the poems by Anon were by women unable to be published...just a thought. Which brings me, in conclusion, to the kit bag - which might have been the title of The School Bag . In the end, we were swayed to the school bag because the kit bag had such a strong association with military action and suggested the solidarity of massed ranks rather than the sympathies of a well-schooled and many-minded individual. It conveyed an impression of positive certitude and imperial destiny rather than negative capability and common humanity. In our time, after all, a post-colonial time, in a world of multi-ethnic populations, the image of the marching man in khaki uniform, with his gun and his gear, is more of a menace than a promise. Become a Faber Member for free and receive curated book recommendations, special competitions and exclusive discounts.

The Rattle Bag: An Anthology of Poetry - Google Books

Arranging the poems alphabetically by first line results in some lovely serendipities - strange and refreshing pairings which might have been missed if they’d gone for a thematic or chronological structure. Arbitrary riches rather than engineered instruction: that was what we were after. There were no lesson plans implicit in either the contents of The Rattle Bag or in their arrangement. What we hoped to do was to shake the rattle and awaken the sleeping inner poet in every reader. We proceeded in the faith that the aural and oral pleasures of poetry, the satisfactions of recognition and repetition, constitute an experience of rightness that can make the whole physical and psychic system feel more in tune with itself. We implicitly believed that a first exposure to poetry, the early schooling in it, should offer this kind of rightness, since it constitutes one of the primary justifications of the art. One of our inclusions, after all, was Gerard Manley Hopkins's "The Woodlark", which begins:The cadence of its last two lines - "But mine in my ear is safe - / Just a little white with the dust" - is unassertive, the metrical posture of the lines is a yielding one, and the dusty whiteness of the flower is suggestive of debilitation; and yet, as an expression of what we know intuitively and historically about our human condi tion, the lines are unshakably right, unwithering and unwitherable. Like many another poem written in the trenches of Flanders, this one exhibits the staying power that poets and poetry continue to furnish for the species, generation after generation. So while the grand primary principle of pleasure is one that will always justify and underwrite the teaching of poetry, poetry should also be taught in all its seriousness and extensiveness because it encompasses the desolations of reality, and remains an indispensable part of the equipment we need in the human survival kit. This writer and lecturer won this prize "for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past." the collection contains a few poems translated into English from Irish, Welsh, Swedish, (as far as I read), but still feels very limited. In the end, the volume was too abundant, too frolicsome and too unruly to go by the rather headmasterly title in the contract, so all of a sudden Ted suggested we call it by the name of a strange roguish poem translated from the Welsh of Dafydd ap Gwilym. It's about an instrument that sounds more like an implement, a raucous, distracting, shake, rattle-and-roll affair that disturbs the poet and his lover while they lie together in the greenwood. In the words of the translator, Joseph Clancy, it becomes a noisy pouch perched on a pole, a bell of pebbles and gravel, "a blare, a bloody nuisance". We were wanting to serve notice that the anthology was a wake-up call, an attempt to bring poetry and younger people to their senses. And we wanted to do so for precisely those ends I outlined at the beginning. For the present delight of younger people. For the future nurture of mature people. For the now of perception. For the then of recollection. We intended the same material to prove equally rewarding for the one growing up, the one "standing still" - and, if all went well, for the one "growing down".

The Rattle Bag by Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes | Waterstones The Rattle Bag by Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes | Waterstones

In this award-winning short story, a young man remembers his Chinese mother’s efforts to connect with him through origami. Her origami, a symbol of her culture and love, is infused with a magic that makes it come to life. I don’t want to say much more about this story because it’s such a lovely read (and short!), so I’ll leave it at this: it is one of identity, class struggle, and family. What matters most in the end is the value that attaches to a few poems intimately experienced and well remembered. If at the end of each year spent in school, students have been marked by even one poem that is going to stay with them, that will be a considerable achievement. Such a poem can come to feel like a pre-natal possession, a guarantee of inwardness and a link to origin. It can become the eye of a verbal needle through which the growing person can pass again and again until it is known by heart, and becomes a path between heart and mind, a path by which the individual can enter, repeatedly, into the kingdom of rightness. Condition: Good. Good condition. A copy that has been read but remains intact. May contain markings such as bookplates, stamps, limited notes and highlighting, or a few light stains. Bundled media such as CDs, DVDs, floppy disks or access codes may not be included. it also contains some poems that are pretty problematic wrt stereotypes and racism - these could easily have been omitted.

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The Rattle Bag by Seamus Heaney | Goodreads

You’ll find great fodder here for discussing characterization, the impact of an omniscient narrator, the effect of camera cut-aways and montages (Gob trying in vain to throw the letter into the ocean), and all types of irony. AD started its life as a network show, so it’s got nothing more objectionable than some very light innuendo at the beginning (between Michael and Maeby) and one instance of ‘S-O-B’. All around, this episode is a win.Immediately following this we printed Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach", a work from the other end of the age of religion, when all the poet can hear is the melancholy, long, withdrawing roar of the sea of faith that Adze-head and his brothers had once furled around earth's shores like a bright garment. And immediately following Arnold, we printed Elizabeth Bishop's great invocation to the sea and its waters, her poem called "At the Fishhouses", a poem in which one witnesses the rebirth of a religious impulse in a post-religious sensibility. "I have seen it over and over," Bishop writes, "the same sea, the same, / slightly, indifferently swinging above the stones, / icily free above the stones . . . as if the water were a transmutation of fire / That feeds on stones and burns with a dark gray flame." And the poem ends: I don’t want to give any spoilers away, but this delightfully creepy story will turn the readers’ expectations on their heads. The ending provides an outstanding example of situational irony. And as I noted, you could use this story with middle schoolers or high schoolers. It’s chilling, but not gory or graphic. Sure, “Gift of the Magi” and “The Lottery” are classics for teaching irony, but they offer little in the way of inclusive representation. There is nothing wrong with these stories, but we can serve our students better by including a wider selection of voices and identities. I’m not asking you to stop teaching “The Lottery” or “Gift of the Magi”, but encouraging you to add some more inclusive short stories and supporting materials to your curriculum. And here's another with the same kind of mature, naif, off-centre centrality of vision that we favoured, a translation of a poem called "The Earthworm" by 20th-century Swedish poet Harry Martinson: This is one of my favorite songs to use in ELA. Mulan is my favorite Disney movie, so of course I bust out this song when teaching irony. This song is a fun example of dramatic irony, since the audience knows Mulan is a woman, and Li-Shang doesn’t. But this song could get more mileage if you were so inclined — there’s a powerful message about determination and bravery, even in the face of doubters (Sorry, Li-Shang, but you’re a doubter, bud.).