You'd have to ask Brendan Behan and he's dead, so I dunno - still that's very much what it conveyed to him. Or perhaps, he didn't like Kavanagh anyway - and was looking an excuse for an argy bargy.


"I'd say he's fully aware that the "gifts of the mind" weren't quite what was required. ..."
I always felt the complete opposite - that the writer thought the girl should have dropping her drawers in gratitude and in stunned appreciation at the sheer profundity of his 'gifts of the mind'.

However that's the nature of poetry, McGrath. As William Empson said, the lines go backwards and forwards and ambiguity lies at the very heart of the artform.