"Honeymoon Flight"

For several weeks, my class has been working on understanding the poetry of Seamus Heaney’s poetry, an Irish poet that recently died in 2013.  A major part of understanding poetry is analyzing the sound patterns, including alliteration, consonance, and assonance, all of which help to emphasize meaning.  The poem I’ve chosen to analyze is “Honeymoon Flight,” a selection from his volume entitled Death of a Naturalist. 

Below, the patchwork earth, dark hems of the hedge,

The long grey tapes of road that bind and loose
Villages and fields in casual marriage:
We blank above the small lough and farmhouse

And the sure green world goes topsy-turvy

As we climb out of our familiar landscape.
The engine noises change.  You look at me.
The coastline slips away beneath the wing-tip.

And launched right off the earth by force of fire

We hang, miraculous, above the water,
Dependent on the invisible air
To keep us airborne and to bring us further.

Ahead of us the sky’s a geyser now.

A calm voice talks of cloud yet we feel lost.
Air-pockets jolt our fears and down we go.
Travellers, at this point, can only trust.

The use of alliteration at the end of the poem with the consonant “t” sound connects together the first and last word of the last line of the poem.  Travellers do indeed need to trust the pilots that fly the planes they are passengers on.  Heaney’s use of alliteration in the first line of the third stanza with the consonant “f” sound emphasizes the power that an airplane has.  Sometimes we take for granted how airplanes work and the science behind keeping something so large in the air.  The first line of the poem features the alliteration of the “h” sound.  The imagery of “hems” and “hedge” paint a picture of what the earth looks like from the sky.  The awe of flying includes being able to differentiate between land and water, forests and fields.

After analyzing the sound patterns, I was able to look deeper into the poem for more meaning.  The poem focuses on two new experiences – marriage and flying on a plane.  Both of these experiences involve risk and overcoming fear through trust.  These two experiences are the themes constant throughout the four stanzas of the poem.  There are two ways to interpret the first stanza of the poem.  The land is given feminine features, which are reminiscent of the recent wedding ceremony:

          Below, the patchwork earth, dark hems of hedge,
          The long grey tapes of road that bind and loose
          Villages and fields in casual marriage
“Hems” may describe the bride’s wedding dress, while “bind and loose” could describe the bond that is created when a couple is married.  The “patchwork” references how when a couple marries, both the bride and groom bring together their customs, culture, and beliefs that are pieced together into a patchwork upon marriage.  This first interpretation of the first stanza gives the poem an exciting tone, as the happy couple is freshly married and off on their first plane ride, contrasting with the darker overtone of the second interpretation.  The use of the words “dark” and “grey” could be used to describe the unavoidable dark periods of marriages, where the couple will fight and disagree with each other.  It could foreshadow that possibly their marriage will not work out because perhaps they are too different.  This is further supported in the following stanzas that go on to describe the plane ride – a marriage can at sometimes be a bumpy ride.