Glanmore

I used to lie with an ear to the line

For that way, they said, there should come a sound

Of flange and piston pitched along the ground.

But I never heard that. Always, instead,

Struck couplings and shuntings two miles away

Of a horse swirled back from a gate, a grey

This poem by Seamus Heaney can be explicated through many different approaches. In my elucidation of “Glanmore Sonnets IV,” the poem can be understood through the poetic terms, situation and the larger idea.

Turnover of haunch and mane, and I’d look

There are many elements to consider when analyzing poetry. There are also several different ways to interpret a poem, none being wrong or right. Each person sees a poem in their own way. The basic fundamentals of a poem to bear in mind when reading poetry are the form, situation, poetic terms, and tone. Each of these will increase the understanding and proper analysis of the poem. In this specific poem the form is an English sonnet with true and slant rhyming, caesura, enjambment, and a neutral tone. The sonnet describes how the speaker remembers when he/she put their ear to the train tracks to hear for the train approaching yet never did hear it. Then turning over the speaker would see the train approaching in the distance and then pass him by as he watched it leave where he thought it would begin.

Two fields back, in the house, small ripples shook

There are different types of sonnets that poets use when creating their poetry. The three most common forms of sonnets are the Italian, English, and Spensenan. To reveal which category this poem fits into, the rhyming schemes must be considered. The Italian form uses five different rhymes, in the pattern of, ABBAABBACDECDE. The first eight rhymes are an octet and the last six are called a sestet. The English form of a sonnet uses seven different rhymes rather than five, and has a couplet located on the last two lines of the poem. In alpha form this pattern appears as, ABABCDCDEFEFGG. The third form of a sonnet, known as Spensenan, is a combination of the English and Italian forms. The Spensenan uses five rhymes like the Italian form and has a couplet at the last two lines of the sonnet, and appears as ABABBCBCCDCDEE. The next step to decide which form this poem is most similar to is to take the last word of each line and make a rhyme pattern that fits the sonnet. The last word of the first line is “line” which has

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