Heather Corbally Bryant is a Senior Lecturer at Wellesley College, the author of a prize-winning study of Elizabeth Bowen, and eleven books of poems. Her poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, the Massachusetts Book Award, and have received honorable mention in the Finishing Line Press’s Open Chapbook competition.

Welcome to the Poets Weave. I’m Romayne Rubinas Dorsey. Heather, what poems have you brought for us today?

Listening to Seamus Heaney

I.

The first time I heard this man read I thought I was sophisticated,
But really I was so young, a sophomore in college; I sat between my
Mother and my father; I was so busy, almost too busy to meet them
For this occasion. I remember how the words spilled forth that April
Afternoon from Heaney, the first living poet I had heard speak. I
Remember the sounds of his syllables, a poem called "Mint,"
Written after the death of his mother, the aroma of the mint she
Grew in her garden; afterwards, I told my father I wanted to be a poet;
He had been bemused, but my world had changed, I had heard a person
Explain the sorcery between the conception of an idea and a dream,
And how that magic makes a poem; I was too busy, or so I thought,
To take Heaney's course on prosody, too busy to know my own Truth.

II.
As a young married woman, I heard him read for the second time
In Sanders Theatre, to a crowd filled November room; he was famous
By then, but still so humble, he explained the origins of one of his poems,
How the idea of procreation had come to him when he had peeked out
His window to see the black bag his mother's doctor
Carried with him every time just before another brother or sister
Arrived; Heaney described how he thought the baby came in
The bag, when he was supposed to be sleeping; I did not have children then,
But yearned for them, longed to be a mother; I listened to how he spoke
As both son and father. I cursed myself for not taking his course when
It was right in front of me, everything there but for the asking.

III.
Of course I read every word he wrote throughout the years, and I thought
Often of how he spoke, reminded once again alone at Harvard on a warm
October evening when the Cambridge fire brigade had to intervene
Because students filled the pathways, blocking the corridors, a hazard
To public safety. The chief fire marshall ordered half the audience
Outside where they went, disgruntled and disobliged, hanging on
The windowsills by their fingertips to hear Heaney's words floating
Through the fall evening; by then I had children, but I was already
Distrusting the contours of my life; I found his poems a comfort.

IV.
Just knowing he inhabited the universe gave me hope; So I stood
Alone in a long line waiting to have "Opened Ground" signed--He looked
Up at me after scribbling his name and said "Good luck," or "Godspeed,"
I can't remember which, and I left that room carrying the memory
Of him with me as someone who would always bear the truth of word
And soul; I reread "Mint" in the days following my own mother's
Death and I thought of how words can live forever, but not people,
Just the memory of his voice reading came alive to me; his words
Always with me; the notice of his death that August morning, close
After my own mother's, came as a shock, his voice stilled, impossible.

You’ve been listening to the poems of Heather Corbally Bryant on the Poets Weave. I’m Romayne Rubinas Dorsey.