Plog #4

From The Frontier Of Writing

The tightness and the nilness round that space

when the car stops in the road, the troops inspect

its make and number and, as one bends his face

towards your window, you catch sight of more

on a hill beyond, eyeing with intent

down cradled guns that hold you under cover

and everything is pure interrogation

until a rifle motions and you move

with guarded unconcerned acceleration—

a little emptier, a little spent

as always by that quiver in the self,

subjugated, yes, and obedient.

So you drive on to the frontier of writing

where it happens again. The guns on tripods;

the sergeant with his on-off mike repeating

data about you, waiting for the squawk

of clearance; the marksman training down

out of the sun upon you like a hawk.

And suddenly you're through, arraigned yet freed,

as if you'd passed from behind a waterfall

on the black current of a tarmac road

past armor-plated vehicles, out between

the posted soldiers flowing and receding

like tree shadows into the polished windscreen.

In the poem "The Fronttier of Writing" by Seamus Heaney, the author uses intimidating diction and an extended metaphor in order to show the struggles of a writer to please others without compromising his/her own beliefs.

Within the poem, Heaney uses the overarching metaphor of writing being a checkpoint that a writer must pass through in order to be published. He uses intimidating diction such as "guns", "quiver" and "interrogation" to show that the fear or rejection or disapproval in one's writing is real, and that the speaker feels forced almost with violence to do as he is told, or write as he is expected to.

We can tell that this speaker has conformed to what he was told to write by where he says "subjugated, yes, and obediant". We can also tell that he is not happy about this fact because he says he feels "a little emptier, a little spent" - almost as if he is wasting away by not being able to write what he wants.

It is also interesting to note that the speaker doesn't actually sound happy or proud of his work at the end of the poem. He simply says he is "arraigned yet freed", which makes him seem relieved, but not necissarily pleased with the outcome. He may feel as though he has compromised what he wanted to say in order to be published, and is therefore not feeling proud of his work, merely happy that is it done. The use of second person narrative also makes the speaker sound disconnected from it, almost as if he is looking at what has happened to him from an outside view to try and understand what really happened.

Therefore, in Seamus Heaney's "The Frontier of Writing" the use of intimidating diction and the extended metaphor of almost a battlefield contributes to the theme of the struggles of writing and being recognized for your own work and ideas, rather than for what everyone else wanted you to write.