The Locket

It may be strange, but I was drawn to this poem because of the title since I wear my grandma's locket everyday and am extremely attached to it. However, while my locket brings back fond memories of my grandma, John Montague's poem "The Locket" is quite different. While the poem is also reminiscing about someone from his past, it is a compilation of very sad memories of his mother. The first stanza begins the somber tone of the poem since it seems to be speaking of his mother's passing when the opening lines say, "Sing a last song for the lady who has gone." The next stanza continues the sad tone as it begins to explain his mother's ill feelings towards him as a child since he was "coming out both the wrong sex and the wrong way around," which was "Not readily forgiven." I thought the lines in the next stanza "'when poverty comes through the door love flies up the chimney' your favourite saying" were also extremely sad and showed the poor mother-son relationship Montague had.
The opening line in the fourth stanza, "Then you gave me away," addresses the theme of emigration. I found it very interesting that Montague experienced the reversal of what most Irish immigrants did since he was born in the US, but was then sent back to his parent's homeland of Ireland. Doing further research about Montague, I learned that his story becomes sadder because at the age of four he was sent back to Ireland to live with his two aunts since his parents could not afford to keep him and his brothers in the US during the Great Depression. The fact that he went to live with his two aunts reminded my of both Joyce's The Dead and The Cripple of Inishmann.
The final stanza in the poem finally explains the significance of a locket to Montague; "you wore an oval locket with a old picture in it, of a child in Brooklyn." It seems to add a happy tone and ending to the poem and Montague's relationship with his mother since it suggests that while his mother sent him away to Ireland, she always loved him but had a difficult time showing it. Even though I thought this poem was sad, I enjoyed reading it and it was my favorite out of the other poems.

The Locket

I was touched by “The Locket” by John Montague in its harsh depiction of a mother-child relationship. The poem was one of the easiest to read in terms of telling the reader what is happening in the poem, but it was packed with many of the poet's complicated emotions towards his mother. The poem opens at Montague’s mother’s death when he says “sing a last song for the lady who has gone.” The language is powerful, specifically when Montague states that his mother considered his gender and his birth a “double blunder.” Further, he says he was “not readily forgiven.” Both of these lines suggest his mother is resentful towards her son’s existence and birth. Lines such as “You never nursed me” and “then you gave me away” tell the reader that the mother was extremely distant woman and did not play much of a role in Montague’s life. The poet touches on his mother’s happier youth when he talks about her “young wild days, which didn’t last long for you, lovely Molly, the belle of your small town.” He contrasts his mother’s youth with her adulthood when he talks of her “cocoon of pain.” The poem concludes sadly, when the poet realizes that his mother wore a locket with a picture of him around her neck, which is the strongest image in the poem. The locket suggests that despite her many flaws, Montague’s mother was still attached to her son in some way. 

The Cage

When I was reading "The Cage" I kept thinking about one of our first days of class when we talked about Irish stereotypes and how everyone was a little bit hesitant to mention drinking. And I think this poem is definitely the opposite, blatantly making the connection between a "traditional Irishman" and drinking "until he reached the only element he felt at home in".

I also thought it was interesting how he makes drunkenness a place, an even further, a cage. He makes it seem as though Brooklyn is such an unhappy place, at least for his father, that he would rather put himself in a cage than actually just "be" alive there. I thought that was really interesting, especially in regards to how we have been dealing with the concept of place thus far in the semester.

Fond Memory

This poem is about a young boy who fighting to retain his Irish culture in a world dominated by anglo ways. He knows that he would be better off if he just accepted the anglo culture and became one of them, but he always seems to hold onto to his original culture and fight off the powers of conformity.

In this poem a number of things figuratively represent the conformity of English culture. The woolen clothing and rationed food all represent the conformity of English culture. The most significant example of English conformity in this poem is when Boland speaks of the magna carta and the Hanoverians. The Magna Carta was an agreement between the English monarchy and the English aristocracy limiting the powers of each respected branch. It was meant to keep the English crown from becoming to powerful. The Hanoverians were the house of English Monarchs who ruled from the 18th century to the early 20th century. They were extremely powerful and extended colonial english rule throughout the world. The juxtaposition of these two historical references in the poem implies that the English crown gives false promises to its subjects and ultimately the power of monarchs and injustice in general will out itself in English culture.

While there are example of English conformity in this poem, there are also examples of the survival of Irish culture. When the protagonist goes home and listens to his father sing the hymns of the famous Irish poet Thomas Moore while intoxicated, this represents the survival of Irish culture. But there is also a hidden warning at the end of the poem to all Irishmen who yearn for independence from England. The last stanza speaks of the collective pain that Irishmen share and the power of this collective pain to unite Irishmen. He states at the end of the poem that Irishmen must do more than feel sorry for themselves in order to gain independence from England, they must better themselves.

Westering

Seamus Heaney's "Westering" begins with a detailed description of a map of the moon, comparing its color to that of a frog's skin and its craters to pores, giving it a human quality. The speaker, initially narrating in present tense, then reminisces on his last night in Donegal, not giving us any more information than that, as though the reader is supposed to know where Donegal is and what its significance could be. He then speaks in past tense of an ambiguous "her," describing his shadow on a nameless woman's skin. I took this to most likely be a lover, the way he mentioned his shadow falling across her "bony shine," conjuring images of the two lying beside one another in the moonlight, hearkening back to the opening image of the map. The fourth stanza tells us that "summer had been a free fall / ending there," perhaps referring to their relationship running its course during the summer and ending that last night in Donegal. The next two stanzas show us the two walking, then driving through the town, eventually reaching a church where they constitute only "a dwindling interruption," illustrating their insignificance in lieu of the goings-on at the congregation. Here the poem takes a turn into the religious, referring to the "studded crucifix" and ending by equating the moon with Jesus, giving it "stigmata" and describing "Christ weighing it by his hands" on the moon, the "it" referring either to the "untroubled dust" or the "loosening gravity," or both, in the preceding lines. The present tense also comes back, with the reader saying "I imagine untroubled dust" rather than "imagined."

The unifying symbol of the poem is that of the moon. In the beginning, it is given to us in the form of a map, then the moonlight is employed in the description of the speaker and the woman in Donegal, ending with the moon as a religious symbol, perhaps representative of Jesus himself. The religious tones are more apparent upon the second or third time reading the poem. It starts out with the speaker looking up at the moon and in doing so, presumably looking toward heaven. The moon blankets the speaker and his woman on their last night together, further emphasizing the significance of their connection, as though they were being watched over by God. Good Friday is mentioned, an obvious reference to Christianity as it is a religious holiday. When he refers to the two of them as that "dwindling interruption," it gives the inconsequential feeling associated with being compared to the vastness of the universe, both in a religious and a celestial sense. And finally, Heaney ends with the clear connection between the moon and Christ, cementing it as a religious figure.

The title of the poem is important to consider as well, and how the poem fits into a group of works about emigration. "Westering" implies a move westward, both physically and internally. The speaker refers in the fourth stanza to "the empty amphitheatre / of the west," taking the speaker to another place. If we assume that Donegal is in Ireland, Heaney is discussing the summer he spent there with this woman and how it had to end upon arriving at this amphitheater (as we western Americans would spell it) in the west. But from then on, the poem is still describing the couple--as signified by the use of past tense--and how they went around the town and encountered this religious happening. To me, this could signify the religious turmoil in Ireland, perhaps implying that the speaker left Ireland to escape it. The change in tense, particularly at the end when he returns to present, could signify that the speaker is now in the west, away from Ireland, reflecting on everything that he left there, invoking the image of Christ as another tie-in to the theme of religion.

These Poems Are A Bit Odd

None of these poems really struck me the first time through, but after a little more examination, there are two in particular to which I kept coming back.

"The Locket" is a very peculiar poem to me because it kind of goes against what I was expecting to find in this category of "emigrant" poems--I was expecting to hear something along the lines of a James Joyce/Bono "let's find somewhere else besides Ireland to dazzle us" kind of attitude, but in this poem, John Montague seems to express a deep respect and love for his mother, despite the fact that she did not give him the love that a good mother would give. (I assume that his mother is a native of Ireland, thus associating his respect for his mother with a respect for his Irish heritage, and I gather that he was born in Brooklyn from the poem.)

What's particularly interesting/potentially on the verge of disturbing is the way he seems to romanticize/eroticize his mother with lines about how he came back to court her and about "teasingly untying [her] apron." It's almost as if, because Montague didn't receive motherly love, he doesn't know the way a relationship between one and one's mother should be, and so he tries the best he can to express his love to her.

It's possible that the lines with romantic/erotic connotations are supposed to be symbols of something, but I don't really understand why he would choose to use those kinds of symbols.

The other poem that resonated more with me as I reread it was "Fond Memory." What I gather from the poem is that Boland is speaking of a certain sense he gathered during his childhood (I presume in Ireland?) that, although there has been a great deal of suffering and striving in the past to work out the kinks of human civilization, everything is pretty much smooth-running now, we've pretty much got it figured out. Thus the children cried for the death of the British King, because the king is a part of a system that is good now, when, actually, as Boland finds out later at the end of the poem, he was wrong, there's a lot of conflict that is still ongoing.

This, at least, was how I perceived the poem, because I feel like this was my attitude for a great deal of my childhood, learning about people like Martin Luther King Jr. and thinking that after all of the amazing things done through the movement he led and inspired that racism was like ancient history, only to grow up and realize that race issues are still all over the place.

I could be completely off on a lot of the stuff I said and assumed...so don't hold me to any of it..ha ha!

A Sons' Love

The thing that struck me the most after reading this poem is the fact that Montague does not once question his mother about her actions or show any sign of resentment towards her. The tone of the poem is very melancholy, but instead of wallowing in the pain that his mother presumably caused, he gives us the sense of understanding that he has towards his mother's plight. He does not criticize her decisions, but has more of a deep compassion for what she herself was forced to endure and the difficulty of the choices she was forced to make.

The poem is a story, in 2nd person, of his mother's life as an immigrant and how her relationship with him reflected the impact that relocation had on her internally. He describes what ultimately happens to his family when he says "when poverty comes through the door love flies up the chimney". At first glance I think that it would be very easy to assume that poverty caused Molly's attention to shift from loving her son to her desperate situation. However I think the point being made is a lot more complex than that. Montague reveals at the end of the poem that his mom really did love him and think of him, to the point where she wanted to carry him with her. "I never knew until you were gone, that always around your neck you wore an oval locket with an old picture in it, of a child in Brooklyn.

Perhaps Molly's love for her son is not shown in the fact that she gave up her child, but in the fact that she loved him so much that she gave him up because she knew she didn't have much to give him. She had to force herself to ignore her innate feelings of love for her child, "I start to get fond of you John, and then you are gone". This suggests that for some reason she felt as though she didn't have the option of becoming attached to her son; as a child probably because she was too poor to care for him, and when he grew up because she was "resigned to being alone". Montague describes her as a "mysterious blessing". I believe that his approach to the situation is the ultimate expression of love. He does not blame her for what she did, he is not discouraged by the fact that she didn't want him when he was born, and he makes the decision to seek her even with the threat of possible rejection. He looks past the things about her that are negative and finds something positive to say, "lovely Molly, the belle of your small town". His love for his mother never wavered, and it turns out that her love for him did not waver either.