I was perplexed by the frequent shifts in tone of Heaney’s poem, “Oysters,” and the contrast between the luxury of eating them and his description of the rigorous processes that allow him such privilege. The opening stanza creates a euphoric tone indicating the richness of the oysters, but shifts abruptly to the harsh process of collecting them. Throughout the poem, Heaney paints an increasingly harsh picture of the logistics of the oysters’ delivery while he enjoys the delicacy in a detached state from the process.
The metaphor represents the harsh social and political conditions being faced by those living in Northern Ireland during the 1970’s, a time of violence and hardship. Heaney indirectly describes the state of Northern Ireland and its occupants through the oysters as “ripped and shucked and scattered,” due to the “philandering” of the British military and increasing violence in the area during the peak of Protestant and Catholic tensions. Heaney’s portrayal of himself in this poem recognizes his position of privilege, but displays his understanding of his position as a poet in the midst of a chaotic uprising that ultimately fuels his writing. I would imagine that this adheres to Heaney’s ambivalence in his sense of belonging. Though he tries not to engage the situation radically, one can see his sense of responsibility to comment on the events unfolding as a leading voice in Irish culture. I can’t tell for certain if he feels guilty for his position of privilege from the poem. He “toasts friendship” over oysters acquired through conflict, but what does that mean if the conflict is that of Northern Ireland? It may fuel his writing, but clearly Heaney wouldn’t ask for any of that. It seems to suggest that by understanding the conflict that feeds him his material he has a responsibility to make sense of it, in his case, by turning it into artful poetry. This idea appears true in the final line, in which the conflict “quickens [Heaney] into verb,” or writing.
August, I agree with your interpretation of “Oysters” as a reflection of Heaney’s position as a poet who is privileged in the sense that he is detached, at least on the level of personal involvement, from the physical violence of the troubles in Northern Ireland but still carries a responsibility in addressing the environment in which he lives and works in. I believe this is also heavily explored in Heaney’s earlier poem “Digging”. In both poems their is desire to turn physical action into poetry or to aestheticize and make immaterial a material reality through language. The last line of “Oysters”, which reads “I ate the day deliberately, that its tang might quicken me all into verb, pure verb”, attempts to bridge this dichotomy between active reality and the passivity of language. By becoming “pure verb”, the speaker does not actually take on the function of pure action but instead is transformed into the symbolic aesthetic of action as created through language. This parallels in “Digging” the speaker rejection of a material heritage of manual, farm labor in favor of becoming a poet. Another aestheticization of the material occurs in the final lines of the poem, “Between my finger and my thumb the squat pen rests. I’ll dig with it”. In this case the speaker must again address a legacy and environment based in material traditions of physical action through the immateriality of language.