Seamus Heaney is often called as a poet of “ in-betweeness” because of the delibrate

embracing of ambiguities in his work. He became internationally famous because his

most remarkable talent was his ability to appeal to all levels and types of readers. As

Heaney said, “The point is to fly under or out and beyond those radar systems.” He

usually depicts both sides of the debate in his work. He writes in between formal and

free verse, between personal and private experience and in the world of accelerating

change he deals between the traditional rituals and the contemparay needs.

From the ahistorical poems about his childhood and innocence to the

historical poems of Great Famine of 1845 he genuinely laid down the example of in-

betweeness.In this poem “Death of a Naturalist’ he laments for the loss of his

childhood innocence and talks about the change of the child’s perspective. .The

'Follower' and 'Mid-term Break', they all share the theme of childhood memories and

are absoulutely ahistorical poems.Through these poem he is potraying his personal

experience. On the other hand through his poem “ digging” Heaney narrates the

horror of potato famine and describes the changed attitude of mistrust towards the

land in order to bring out the altered notion of an irish identity.

Another appearance of in-betweenness in Heaney’s work is his shifting

between his personal memories and his poetic position against the cruel realities of

Northern Irish politics. In a world of accelerating change, Heaney embrace his rituals

and beautiful rural upbringing.Heaney also gives us comforting tone of traditional

patterns . In “Digging” there is the resonance of the traditional choice offered by a

father between a spade and a book or pen, depicting the need to decide whether to

work at home on the land or to study assiduously at school. In “The Given Note,” we

have an echo of the tale of the origin of “Port na bPúcaí” (The Tune of the Fairies),
which travellers or fisherman who stayed overnight on Inis Mhic Fhaolain in the

Blasket Islands.Although Heaney was never explicitly political in his poetry, the

traumatic nature of this sectarian violence informed much of his work, said Brodhead,

who read "VII" from "Station Island".

"Ireland has been characterized by a tradition of sectarian violence,Not armies against

armies, but between people who live together by day and (had) the violence suddenly

intrude on their domestic lives. His poems are an uncanny evocation of this intimate

violence."

His poem deals with politics, both historical and contemporary. This selection

includes an early sonnet titled “Requiem for the Croppies” one of the few poems

dealing with the 1798 rising in Ireland, written in the voice of dead soul;

Terraced thousands died, shaking scythes at cannon.

The hillside blushed, soaked in our broken wave.
They buried us without shroud or coffin.
And in August the barley grew out of the grave.

On the other hand Heaney also writes some finest poem on the political

atmoshphere of Northern Ireland such as “ A Constable Calls, Caasualty and

whatever you say say nothing”. In his poem “Punishment” he describes

himself as the “artful voyeur” who knows he would have cast “the stones of

silenceion from ” . In the section from “Station Island” he speaks to a dead

victim; “ Forgive the way I have lived indifferent- Forgive my timid

circumspect involement”
 The another betweenness in Seamus Heaney’s work is use of language. His voice

fuse with the rich language of Wordsworth, whom he so admired, with the abrupt

Anglo-Saxon feel of Hopkins. We hear the sweeping Wordsworthian tone in “Into

Arcadia” from “Sonnets from Hellas,” which opens with: “It was opulence and amen

on the mountain road.” And closes with: “Subsisting beyond eclogue and

translation.”There are enough examples throughout this selection of Heaney’s

Latinate tone: “fructified like an aquarium,” “superannuated pageantry” (from

“Personal Helicon” and  “A Sofa in the Forties,” respectively). But this tone is offset

by his delight in Anglo-Saxon compound nouns and adjectives such as “oak-bone,”

“brain-firkin,” “frond-lipped,” “brine-stung,” “glitter-drizzle,” “sud-luscious,”

“snotty-guttery”—examples all from poems in this selection. Clearly, some of these

adjectives have Latin origins, but the composite usage is in the Hopkins vein. This

retrieval and renewal of both traditions has an immense attraction for readers.

Russell writes of Heaney’s “agnosticism, that shades even towards atheism at times.”

Heaney, speaking about his childhood Catholicism, said that “part of the mission of

the young graduate in my time was to secularize yourself,” and that “the doctrinal

observance, the practicing Catholicism, it just went.” Yet gestures toward what might

be beyond the ethics of  The Haw Lantern or The Republic of Conscience begin to

appear in his later work. His well-known phrase “crediting marvels” signals this.” In

“Postscript” he writes, “Big soft buffetings come at the car sideways / And catch the

heart off guard and blow it open.” Yet it feels in “The Gravel Walks” as if he is

almost holding out against that lift-off: “So walk on air against your better

judgement / Establishing yourself somewhere in between.”

Heaney is truly the most tranisitional poet of the contemporary world. His unque style

lie in “in betweeness” in which he writes between the zone and believes in the debate

of both sides . He never sees a boundary between art and compassion, but rather

believed that art was fundamentally driven by empathy, by a bond that links every living

person.