Personal Helicon Essay Questions

Discuss this poem's use of point of view and the effects of its point-of-view shifts.

"Personal Helicon" is narrated by an adult speaker, but throughout the work, the speaker moves between recollections of his childhood and descriptions of his adult mindset. Therefore, when the poem begins with the phrase "as a child," we understand that the speaker is remembering his childhood from a distance, and perhaps with a degree of nostalgia. Yet his descriptions of the past, though they remain in the past tense, grow more immersive and immediate. As a result, the abrupt shift back to descriptions of adulthood with the single word "now" is jarring, mimicking the jarring experience of coming of age. Reader and speaker alike are thrust somewhat harshly back into the present, and the poem's childhood reminiscences are made suddenly distant again.

What is the significance of the title's allusion?

Mt. Helicon is an actual peak in Greece, considered a location where creative artists went to find inspiration. “Personal Helicon” is thus a reference to the source of artistic inspiration. By alluding to it so prominently, Heaney gives readers an early clue into a connection that will soon become explicit—the connection between the wells on which the poem is largely focused, and the poetic practice described at its end. The wells, the title suggests, are "Helicons," sources of poetic inspiration for the speaker. Moreover, the allusion links the classical tradition to the countryside rambling of the speaker's childhood, implying that the two are worthy of the same attention and respect.