Throughout the whole collection of poems in ‘Field Works’ Heaney has focused on the conflict and political issues as well as lose of loved ones. But in ‘The Otter’ and ‘The Skunk’, we as readers receive a much more romantic sense of those two poems as they are written about his wife, at least that what we receive the sense of.
Heaney uses these two animals, to describe his admiration for his wife, ‘I loved your wet head’ and ‘your fine swimmer’s back and shoulders’. The idea that Heaney uses animals such as ‘otter’ and ‘skunk’ gives us the idea of beauty and or stability, as in nature stability in the food chain and comparing it to his marriage readers would suggest is that the stability in their marriage. By using animals that are classified as cute or adorable in today’s society might suggest that Heaney was trying to express his wife’s beauty.
Especially in ‘The Otter’ Heaney is using a conceit of ‘otter’ being the woman e is talking about as stated before, but not only that, Heaney has written the poem in a form that there is no rhythm, meter or foot which could explain the way he felt about this woman in the past, as we realize that its a memory of Heaney’s, ‘loved’ suggests the memory. Although Heaney uses a lot of second-person pronoun ‘you’ which would refer to the woman, ‘otter’. As reading one article of Heaney’s he has mentioned a great desire for Italy and the place ‘Tuscany’ and would prefer living there. As the poem is a memory poem but also a romantic one, Heaney mentioning ‘Tuscany’ gives an impression that, that is the place that Heaney has fell in love with this ‘otter’. Through the imagery of ‘wet head’ and onomatopoeia ‘smashing crawl’ which is what noise the water would do, it gives the woman an actual ‘otter’image. The idea of the woman’s elegance and her movement in the water by using the word ‘swung’ gives the impression that the woman is so delicate in her movement in water like the otter, but also gives an impression of Heaney’s heart being won over by this woman.
In Heaney’s description of him being ‘dry-throated on the warm stone’ could suggest that he and his wife are complete opposites from each other, him being ‘dry’ and ‘warm’ and her being like the ‘pool’ cool and ‘wet’. But it also can suggest that by just looking at her and her elegance movement Heaney feels ‘warm’ and cozy by her presence. The idea that Heaney is using ‘you were beyond me’, suggest that these two people are complete separate individuals, that their personalities ‘clash’ and not coming into a compromise, and by that phrase ‘you were beyond me’ suggest that he was the land and she was the water, giving the reader the idea of separation that Heaney mentions in this poem.
Referring to the woman as she is ‘printing the stones’ suggests that she not only has left marks on the ‘warm stone’ that Heaney was connected with by sitting on it but also she has left marks on him and that why he calls her the ‘Otter of memory’.
In the poem ‘The Skunk’, Heaney describes how terribly he misses his wife, by referring to ‘funeral’ suggest their separation is death like to him that she isn’t with him seems as she has gone forever. Although to us the skunk is associated as being a little smelly creature, but not only that they are animals that attach to a loved one very much, suggesting that the love of Heaney and his wife is very strong.
The use of ‘beautiful’ and ‘useless’ gives an impression of Heaney remembering his wife being ‘beautiful’but that memory is ‘useless’ to him right at that time as she isn’t with him at that time for him to admire her beauty. Heaney’s choice of words might have been very accurate and deliberate to prove that their love has taken time for it to develop ‘orange tree’and ‘eucalyptus’ represent that their love took while to grow and it will stay there for a very long time and that it will not die if it properly cared for.
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