Critical appreciation poetry

These two poems, Follower by Seamus Heaney and Request to a year by Judith Wright seem to have nothing in common, just at looking the titles, apart from the visual structure composed with quatrains. However, after reading them both in depth, similarities about language, structure and style appear, although they have their own specificities.

Both poems seem to have a common theme : In Follower, the narrator by his story shows us his admiration of the art. It is also the case of Judith Wright's poem, where the narrator describes her great-great-grandmother as a true artist, « legendary devotee to art ». Besides, the strong use of technical vocabulary « the sod rolled over without breaking » emphasises the fact that the narrator is fascinated by the labour of his father who does it as « an expert ».

These moments of the narrators's childhood is shared more easily with the use of the first person « I wanted », « I should ». It gives to the poems a personal atmosphere. The reader completely enters in the world of the narrator and it allows him to see the scene closer : when the child is going to fall and when the father is ploughing. Thus, the reader can empathize with the narrator and Seamus Heaney and Judith Wright manage to develop emotions inside us.

Judith Wright and Seamus Heaney also try to instill a dramatic, nostalgic and melancholic mood through the poems's lines because in both poems, the narrator who really admires his ancestor, acquires the skill of the father, as in Follower and remember the time he did not have it. Whereas Judith Wright's narrator does not have it yet and rather ask it as a Mother's gift. However, they both desire this precious skill assimilated as art. This transmission of skill broaches more generally the theme of heritage and heredity.

As far as the general structure is concerned, we observe that they are composed with quatrains linked by numerous enjambments « with a single pluck//of reins