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The Given Note
Comic
The Given Note
A visual interpretation of Seamus Heaney’s poem asks where music comes from.
Julian Peters
November 16, 2023

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This poetry comic is excerpted from Poems to See By .

On the most westerly blasket, in a dry-stone hut
He got this air out of the night
Strange noises were heard by others who followed, bits of a tune coming in on loud weather
Though nothing like melody. He blamed their fingers and ear as unpracticed, their fiddling easy
for he had gone alone into the island, and brought back the whole thing
The house throbbed like his full violin
So whether he calls it spirit music or not, I don't care. He took it
Out of wind off the mid-atlantic
Still he maintains, from nowhere
It comes off the bow gravely,
Rephrases itself into the air.

“The Given Note” from Seamus Heaney, Door into the Dark (London: Faber & Faber, 1969). Used with permission.

Julian Peters

Julian Peters is an illustrator and comic book artist living in Montreal, Canada, who focuses on adapting classical poems into graphic art. His work has been exhibited internationally and published in several poetry and graphic art collections.

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