Personal Helicon

I was interested by the different aspects of Personal Helicon. It is a poem that, at first glance, is not difficult to understand or comprehend, however the subtleties of the poem are what made it a great poem in my mind.

This poem describes a series of the narrator’s experiences in which he looked down into wells in his childhood. He is nostalgic for the time in his life where he had the ability to do that. In describing the wells, he uses sensory imagery to show how much of an impact the wells had on him, and so that the reader can picture the experience himself. He appeals to the sense of smell by describing “the smells of waterweed, fungus and dank moss.” The sense of sight is also appealed to as he described the wells as “so deep you saw no reflection in it” and Heaney appeals to the sense of touch when he describes dragging “out long roots from the soft mulch” and says he used to “pry into roots, to finger slime.” Lastly, he appeals to the sense of hearing when he says some wells “had echoes, gave back your own call with a clean new music in it.” All of these different ways in which Heaney appeals to the senses places the reader on top of a well, just like the narrator was in his childhood.

These detailed descriptions also give a sense of nostalgia for the narrator’s past. He concludes saying “I rhyme to see myself, to set the darkness echoing.” Although he says darkness here, there is no negative connotation; rather it is very positive. He writes this poem and uses the ABAB rhyme scheme to relive his childhood, and remember all the great experiences he had looking down into wells. Along these same lines, he describes the echo within the wells as ‘music’ and he says he “loved the dark drop.” All of these descriptions of his experiences around wells are positive ones, and indicate his longing to be a child again.

As a result, this poem represents a loss of innocence. The narrator states that going to wells now is “beneath all adult dignity.” It is not that the narrator doesn’t want to look down wells anymore; rather he is not allowed to due to social and cultural norms. Also, he begins by saying “as a child, they could not keep me from wells.” In this quote, ‘they’ represents adults or society, which furthers the idea that it is against cultural norms. His coming of age is also evident in the structure of the poem. The first stanza describes his childhood; the middle three are examples of his experiences with wells and the last shows what the narrator has now become.