Quotations to Memorize
Essential quotations from both poets, tagged by poem and theme. This is an open-book exam, but having these ready will save time.
Heaney Quotations (11)
“Our shells clacked on the plates”
“After a killing / the gutturals of dialect”
“how long were you approaching down / My road?”
“I loved her”
“How culpable was he / That last night when he broke / Our tribe’s complicity?”
“Vowels ploughed into other”
“The end of art is peace”
“You were not keyed or pitched like these true-blue ones”
“They locked the door of the dreadful tower”
“When you plunged / The light of Tuscany wavered”
“Up late, I fell in love”
Sheers Quotations (13)
“the wasted young…their skeletons paused mid dance-macabre”
“As if the notes they had sung / have only now…slipped from their absent tongues”
“the china plate of a shoulder blade”
“And the horses, Jesus, he said, the horses were the worst”
“But only for her did it end there”
“Nine nights I have watched you heal”
“And I wondered when will it ever end?”
“His mouth, a line of stitches”
“icebergs of white feather”
“our hands…swum the distance between us / and folded”
“All my life I’ve wanted to / be opened by a man like that”
“And I don’t know why, / but I stood there, watching”
“The map was torn along the border / So we knew the land was bleeding”