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In this poem, ‘Death of a Naturalist’, Heaney conjures a richly evocative image of the countryside, focusing on this flax dam where all the action takes place. He creates such a sensory journey that even the most uninitiated city dweller feels a keen sense of the beating heart of the countryside.
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“Death of a Naturalist” was written by the Nobel-Prize winning Irish poet Seamus Heaney. It was published in 1966 as the title poem of Death of a Naturalist, Heaney's first book of poetry. The book—and the poem—did much to establish Heaney’s reputation as the leading Irish poet of his generation.
The title poem in Heaney’s debut poetry collection Death of a Naturalist, published in 1966, ‘Death of a Naturalist’ is a deceptively simple poem about how the fascination and curiosity we feel in early childhood gives way to fear and disgust when we reach adolescence.
Oct 9, 2023 · 'Death of a Naturalist' is a blank verse poem that looks back on childhood, contrasting a boy's innocence with that of disillusionment in the perception of nature. The death is metaphorical: the boy loses his love of nature when fear invades his mind because of the menacing frogs 'cocked on sods'.
The blue bottles are attracted to the smell of the rot, adding to the unpleasant picture. Added to this is the key of the poem, the frogspawn which is described in a more favourable manner to reflect Heaney’s fascination with it, as a child. At school he would display his bottles full of tadpoles.
Heaney’s sly, unsettling “Death of a Naturalist” tells the story of a bad experience that transformed the speaker’s childhood fascination with nature into fear and awe.
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Key learning points. Throughout the poem, Heaney uses multi-sensory descriptions to create vivid imagery. Heaney creates a grotesque description of the flax-dam, perhaps to foreshadow its capability to be threatening. Heaney uses onomatopoeia in the poem to convey the speaker's enthusiasm for, and then later fear of, nature.
