just how quickly can curiosity passion and obsession die let's find out [Music] hey everyone it's me Liam aka mr. Knight aka dystopia junkie and for watching this video it's probably because you're artists and poetry Narcis great so today's video is going to be about Seamus Heaney's poem death of a naturalist which can be found on page 14 of the wje C educast poetry anthology before we get started I recommend that you grab a pen for notes at least three different highlighters and some extra paper - looking at the anthology you'll definitely need that extra paper as there's not much space for notes around the poem before we get started properly I just thought I'd say that this is perhaps my favorite poem from the anthology and if it's not my favorite it's certainly the one that means the most to me I actually studied this poem myself back when I took my GCSEs in 2010 and I think this poem was one that really switched me on to the study of poetry and English more generally so who knows where I'd be if it weren't for this poem or my fantastic English teachers if you've watched any of my other videos in this series you should know the structure by now if somehow you've not watched any of those videos yet then a link to the playlist they all appearing should be appearing on screen about now so how about you click it and go through all of the invalidity poems so in this video I will read the poem go through its context provide a close reading consider the poems meaning mood and the poet's motivation I'll also think about themes and then finally at the end of the video there will be an optional revision task for you to complete if my videos are helping you with your GCSE revision then please do let me know dropping them alike subscribing to my channel and turning on that notification bell too and of course our welcome your input in the comments section questions about the poem your own analysis and feedback are all welcome okay so generic cringy in youtuber self-promotion aside here is the poem I've had to chop it up a bit as it's the joint longest poem in the anthology as I read it please make sure that you are following along death of a naturalist all the year the flacks damn vested in the heart of the townland green and heavy headed flax had rotted there weighted down by huge sods daily its welted in the punishing sun bubbles gargled delicately blue bottles wove a strong cause of sound around the smell there were dragonflies spotted butterflies but best of all was the warm thick slobber of frog spawn that grew like clotted water in the shade of the banks here every spring I would fill jam pot full of the jellied specks to range on window sills at home on shelves at school and wait and watch until the fattening dots burst into nimble swimming tadpoles miss walls would tell us how the daddy frog was called a bullfrog and how he croaked and how the mammy frog laid hundreds of little eggs and this was frog spawn you could tell the weather by frogs too for they were yellow in the Sun and brown in rain then one hot day when fields were ranked with cow dung in the grass and angry frogs invaded the flax dam I ducked through hedges to a course croaking that has not heard before the air was the over base chorus write down the damn gross bellied frogs were cocked on sods they're loose next pulsed like sails some hopped the slap and plot were obscene threats some sat poised like mud grenades their blunt heads farting a sicken turned and ran the great slime Kings were gathered there for vengeance and I knew that if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it so there we go that is the poet remember context is worth a third of the marks which is why I always insist on going over it before analyzing the poem Seamus Heaney was an Irish poet who was born in 1939 and died in 2013 as such he is not necessarily primarily a 21st century poet but neither is he a poet from centuries ago his death in 2013 was profoundly felt across the literary world he was massively acclaimed now I know I've said that about quite a few of the anthology poets because well they are but Heaney tops the lots I think he won numerous prizes and awards and honors in his lifetime including the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995 I don't think it's hyperbole to say that he is one of the most if not the most important and influential poets of the English language of the late 20th century Heaney was a trained teacher elected at universities and was of course a poet he grew up in rural Northern Ireland on his parents farm his upbringing can be seen across his poetry in the people places and events it features and death of a naturalist is no different Heaney described his childhood as an intimate physical creaturely existence in suspension between the archaic and the modern in his Nobel Prize lecture the idea of his childhood being physical and creaturely is especially relevant to this poem I think his brother Christopher was killed in a road accident in 1953 and he was four years old this had a profound effect on Heaney and his writing in which he often explored the loss of innocence so when I was researching Heaney for this video I thought that it was interesting that he first became a father in the same year that he published this poem and yeah the poem was published in a book that had the same name I do wonder if hidden becoming a parent to a boy had him thinking about his own childhood and time as a boy certainly this is a bit of context that I don't see other revision materials or revision videos even mention here we have the poems title which I've got two questions for before we look at them this is your final reminder to get your three highlighters out and to set up a key for yourself so there are my two questions for the title remember it's important to have summon artists prepped for each poems title as you will definitely be given the title of each poem in your exam paper even if they're not the poem for your first question I think it's important to clarify a common misconception with the title of this poem a naturalist is somebody who is an expert in or a student of nature be that animal or plant life it is not somebody who gets naked which many students seem to think it is now that we've cleared up what a naturalist is we can think a bit more about what the title means nobody dies in this poem so it can't be about the literal death of a naturalist and so we must think metaphorically a naturalist can still die if they lose their passion or interest in nature which is something that we do see happen in this poem this metaphorical death could be seen as the loss of innocence or the loss of childhood ideas that are said to feature in Heaney's poetry due to his younger brother's death here we have the poems first four lines and accompanying them are one two three four questions so there now pause the video if you want a go at answering them on your own first festered and rotted a both words related to decay and death although here they have been used in a more literal and natural way by having language related to death early on in the poem though Heaney may be foreshadowing the eventual metaphorical death of the poems eponymous naturalist here I'm arguing that heart has been used to personify the townland the flax tan which is just a pool of water where flax a plant is placed to soften up is at the townlands heart which stresses that it is very important to the community and the persona nature and man seem to live in symbiosis and although it is suggested that man and nature live symbiotically it also seems that nature is at times in war with itself as the Sun is punishing the flax this confrontational tone could be used to foreshadow the poems warlike ending although the poem seems very positive about nature its potential threat is recognised in the early stages of the poet there's loads of alliteration in these lines I've identified three examples with words starting with F H and s and it would be useful for you to highlight these as well as any others that you find in these lines and beyond Heaney is a poet for whom the music of language really sings in these lines I'd argue that the alliteration makes the poem sound a bit like a nursery rhyme a poetic form that's relies heavily on sound this I argue reflects the personas youth so here we have the poems next six lines but thankfully there's only one two three questions for them hopefully these questions are relatively straightforward and you should be able to give them a go on your own before seeing my ideas right so there's an oxymoron present in the phrase goggled delicately since gargling can be quite a rough guttural blunt sound and anything but delicate however this use of oxymoron shows that the youthful persona finds pleasure in the sounds of nature no matter how disgusting or obtuse they may be I've counted the references to nature as images here because they all evoke a powerful picture in my mind we've all seen bluebottle flies and so on before and so just by mentioning them they put images into our minds as readers by including such a high number of nature images in such a short space creates a high image density suggesting that nature is alive and thriving but also that the persona is fascinated by it as they notice so many of its aspects the childlike language highlights the personas naivety and innocence and is evidenced by best of all and slobber childlike language will make an appearance later in the poem so keep an eye out and here we have the next few lines of the poem and there are 1 2 3 4 questions that I'm going to be thinking about in relation to these lines what ideas do they make you come up with please let me know in the comment section down below the determiner every suggests that the personas fascination with nature was longer-lasting as they collected frogs born repeatedly over a number of years okay so the alliteration in Jam portals of the jellied specs makes the personas passion seem natural as jellied substances probably belong in jam jars even linguistically Jam Pottsville's which is a made-up word it should be noted it's pluralized and so the personas passion seems fast the alliteration in weights and watch as well as the repetition of and in this phrase if you were to extend your highlighting back by a word shows how absorbed the persona is in their passion as they would seemingly observe the frogspawn for hours and hours battening dots burst is a lovely image and it suggests that nature is alive thriving and full of energy and here we have the end of the poems the first stanza for these lines I have one two three all questions for you to think about so why not pause the video and give them a go for yourself hear these language choices make it clear that the persona is young and also Irish young children have a habit of retelling what their teachers have told them in great detail something that happens less and less in adolescence young children are also known to sometimes call male and female animals the mummies and daddies here though Heaney has nude mammy which is a word commonly used in Ireland meaning mummy connected to youth the personas naivety and innocence are also exemplified as they take miss Wars his words as gospel and put total faith in what she has told them again through his language choices Heaney has captured the youthfulness of the pose persona this time by repeating and three times in one sentence if you have any primary school-aged siblings or family members listen out for how often they say and however this repetition of and also shows the personas enthusiasm and passion for nature their knowledge is practically spilling out of them and their sentences seem to never end rain generally has negative connotations through mentioning it Heaney could be hinting at something negative on the poems horizon the abrupt ending of the line and stanza I'm sure you've noticed that this bottom line in rain is considerably shorter than the rest of the poem could foreshadow the sudden metaphorical death that is in the next stanza this abrupt ending combined with the negative connotations contained within the line means that lists line could be considered the poems falter so here we have the beginning of the poems second and final stanza there are stark differences between this stanza and the one before it and as such it is analytically rich here are the one two three four five questions that I will be considering in just a moment but why don't you pause the video first have a think and write down some of your own ideas down in the comment section so if you want answers those five questions well tough you're going to have to wait just a little bit longer until part two of my analysis of death of a naturalist drops which is gonna be really really soon but just to make sure you don't miss out on that second part of my lasas of the poem how about you subscribe to my channel and turn on that notification bell too that way you won't miss it thanks for watching and I hope you have an awesome arrest of the bead day Cheers [Music] [Music]