We talk about fatherhood and the artistic voice through the lens of two poems, one by Seamus Heaney (“Digging”), and the other by Seth Wieck (“Names of Crops”; see below). We compare the two poems and sprinkle in a little of our own stories as we go. We hope this will encourage you to consider the ‘soil’ from which you came and how it might nourish your own authentic artistic voice.
Here is Seamus Heaney reading “Digging”:
And here is “Names of Crops” by our very own Seth Wieck:
Names of Crops For Christopher Timothy At a mile, measured along the muzzle plane of my father’s arm, iron-sighted between forefinger and thumb, a dog-speck loped across the nail of his index, fully-formed, flea-sprung from that pate of keratin. He called it forth: Ky-oat. Coyote. The man had a hawk’s vision: So far away, the feral form floated in the fenceline. I mimicked his naming of nearly nothing. Dropping his hand, he named grainheads as red as the sun-red arm which assayed their weight by the acre: twin tea sin tree wait maze. Twenty-century-weight Maize. Milo. Sorghum. Each a name for the same thing for which I had no name. He shucked a maizehead, opened his hand, bleeding spoors of red kernels, rolling in palmcreases like a Crackerjack ball-in-a-maze: Roll the ball from beginning to end. In the maize’s beginning our tractor and drill sowed mouses and bunnies from the clods. Hawks canceleered, censored the scenes behind a flash of pinion and wing. Cottontails, hares, vermin and vole disseminated from the viscera. Count three days (index, middle, ring) then fingercomb the dirt kernel-tombs. “Verily,” he said in seedred letters. Tipped at his soiled index, a maizeseed split by a tendril tail like altricial kits spilt from a doerabbit harrowed by the plow. Naming the crop split me a thumb from a forefinger a row from a row and line upon line I call out coyote.
Take a look at the chapter headings below to see the ground we cover.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Context of Fatherhood 04:20 The Role of Fathers and Family Dynamics 10:32 Exploring Poetry and Fatherhood 12:08 Analyzing 'Digging' by Seamus Heaney 30:56 Reflections on Legacy and Personal Identity 35:31 The Terroir of Life and Legacy 36:57 Embracing Heritage and Identity 38:57 The Power of Poetry and Connection 40:04 Analyzing 'Names of Crops' by Seth Wieck 44:03 Vision and the Role of Fathers 49:59 Language, Learning, and Legacy 57:43 The Intersection of Life and Death 01:01:50 The Mystery of Naming and Identity
Share this post