In Seamus Heaney’s poem, “Follower,” the speaker[1] follows his father while he performs his work on their farm. Heaney begins by describing his father adoringly and wishes that he were as competent as his father, but, by the end of the
Per the Oxford English Dictionary, “bill” can denote a show of affection or a violent peck [1][2]. Heaney’s use of “bill” in “The First Flight” is a double entendre, implying both of these meanings despite their dissimilarity (18). The first meaning
Ma, Da, duck, cheese- these were a few of my first words. A somewhat meager handful if you ask me, although I did have rather small hands back then. In hindsight, I do not believe that any of my first
I lay down across her with my face in her breasts and my hand on her. We lay there without moving. But under us all moved, and moved us, gently, up and down, and from side to side. Pause. (Beckett 252)
“And cried, ‘Before I am old I shall have written him one Poem maybe as cold And passionate as the dawn.’” (“The Fisherman,” 37- 40) W.B. Yeats’s “The Fisherman” fulfills its own prophecy: the realization of its ending lies in