‘Under Ben Bulben’ was completed in 1938, just one year before W. B. Yeats’s death. This makes it one of his last great poems; indeed, he dictated the final revisions to the poems from his deathbed. Yeats dated ‘Under Ben Bulben’ to September 4th, 1938. The poem is perhaps best-known […]
Tag: Irish Literature
A Short Analysis of W. B. Yeats’ ‘Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop’
‘Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop’ first appeared as part of the collection Words for Music Perhaps in 1932; it is one of W. B. Yeats’s later poems and part of a series of poems featuring ‘Crazy Jane’. Before we offer some words of analysis of ‘Crazy Jane Talks with […]
A Short Analysis of W. B. Yeats’ ‘On Being Asked for a War Poem’
‘On Being Asked for a War Poem’ is a poem by W. B. Yeats (1865-1939), written in 1915 and published the following year. It’s one of Yeats’s shortest well-known poems, comprising just six lines, and sets out why Yeats chooses not to write a ‘war poem’ for publication. Before we […]
A Short Analysis of W. B. Yeats’ ‘September 1913’
‘September 1913’ is a poem by W. B. Yeats (1865-1939). It describes Ireland in the month of September 1913, as the title suggests, and sees Yeats lamenting the condition of Ireland at that time. Before we offer an analysis of the poem, here’s a reminder of the text of ‘September […]
A Summary and Analysis of James Joyce’s ‘The Sisters’
By Dr Oliver Tearle ‘The Sisters’ is the opening story in James Joyce’s 1914 collection, Dubliners. Unlike the other stories in the collection, it is told in the first person, by a young man recalling his friendship, as a boy, with a Catholic priest. As this very brief summary of […]