Heaney uses sound a lot in this poem.
Firstly, the enjambment makes you read it as if Heaney is speaking, so that it sounds as if he is sharing a childhood memory with you. Then it is divided into two sections - the first is a happy childhood memory, with sounds like bubbles which "gargle delicately", as if they are too polite to do it loudly, and the "gauze of sound" with another suggestion of delicacy, and the "z" sound, like the buzz of insects.
Heaney also uses alliteration, to make certain phrases stick in the mind, "jampotfuls of the jellied specks", which sounds like something sweet, and thus attractive.
Then there is the second stanza, with very different sounds.
The croaking is now "coarse" and the alliteration there makes sure we remember the nature of the sound. The "bass chorus" sounds like a choir, or the chorus of an opera, and bass voices do sound more powerful and threatening, and that is made clearer with "slap" and "plop", as heaney uses onomatopoeia to suggest the rather ugly sounds the frogs makwe as they move about in the flax-dam. The final sound is their "blunt heads farting" which suggests that their heads are their anuses - a disgusting image, and one that comes complete with the idea of a forbidden sound and a nasty smell.
It's interesting that his other poems incorporate childhood memories, or sounds; he clearly gets a lot of his material from his sense of sound, and from his childhood. Do you remember things via sound, or smell? Or are your memories mainly visual?
If I were to be asked to compare this poem with another in the anthology, I'd look for poems which include a lot of sound, or are to do with death or childhood memories.
Firstly, the enjambment makes you read it as if Heaney is speaking, so that it sounds as if he is sharing a childhood memory with you. Then it is divided into two sections - the first is a happy childhood memory, with sounds like bubbles which "gargle delicately", as if they are too polite to do it loudly, and the "gauze of sound" with another suggestion of delicacy, and the "z" sound, like the buzz of insects.
Heaney also uses alliteration, to make certain phrases stick in the mind, "jampotfuls of the jellied specks", which sounds like something sweet, and thus attractive.
Then there is the second stanza, with very different sounds.
The croaking is now "coarse" and the alliteration there makes sure we remember the nature of the sound. The "bass chorus" sounds like a choir, or the chorus of an opera, and bass voices do sound more powerful and threatening, and that is made clearer with "slap" and "plop", as heaney uses onomatopoeia to suggest the rather ugly sounds the frogs makwe as they move about in the flax-dam. The final sound is their "blunt heads farting" which suggests that their heads are their anuses - a disgusting image, and one that comes complete with the idea of a forbidden sound and a nasty smell.
It's interesting that his other poems incorporate childhood memories, or sounds; he clearly gets a lot of his material from his sense of sound, and from his childhood. Do you remember things via sound, or smell? Or are your memories mainly visual?
If I were to be asked to compare this poem with another in the anthology, I'd look for poems which include a lot of sound, or are to do with death or childhood memories.
