Compare and contrast 'Death of a naturalist' and 'Catrin'

‘Right down the dam gross - bellied frogs were cocked’ (line 27)

And also fearful is the tone ‘I knew that if I dipped my hand the spwan would clutch it’ (line33)

He shows he now no longer likes nature ‘I sickened, turned and ran’ (line31) that is the change.

In Clarke’s poem ‘Catrin’ she has mixed feelings of her child throughout ‘In the glass tank clouded with feelings’ (line19).

In the first stanza it is before she has given birth and she tells it as a fight ‘our first fierce confrontation’ (line7) Representing the birth.

‘Red rope of love which we both fought over’ (line 8) This is obviously the umbilical cord.

She does not look fondly upon giving birth as she shows it as a fight ‘Our struggle to become separate’ (line 16) Nor does she seem fond of the child after it is born in the second stanza, she shows she is in battle even though the birth has finished

‘Neither won nor lost the struggle’ (line 18)

‘Tightening about my life’ (line26). But although she shows she doesn’t seem to like the child she loves it ‘trailing love and conflict’ and it all seems just to be fighting for space as it may seem, they argue over small things like people often do ‘Still I am fighting you off’ (line20). She seems frustrated.

The tone of the poem is unhappy and painful a painful ‘struggle’, but also lonely ‘I wrote all over the walls with my words’ obviously she had no one to talk to.

The ways the both writers portray their thoughts and feelings and to create the atmosphere and tone is by using significant words in phrases. For example in Death of Naturalist to make to stanza two seem serious and to show he thinks it is ‘disgusting’ Heaney uses words that create a negative image

‘Right down the dam gross- bellied frogs were cocked’ (line 27) The underlined words create a negative feeling. He uses this often throughout the poem

‘Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting’ (line30).

Clarke also uses this method in Catrin, ‘It was a square an environmental blank, disinfected of toys and paintings’ (line10) this shows how lonely and plain the room was, how it was blank and bare, the word ‘disinfected’ creates an uneasy feeling, as dirty, nasty things have a need to be disinfected.this surely would make anyone feel uncomfortable.

They use the same method to make phrases create a happy, positive image in the readers mind. Heaney puts both negative and positive words into the same phrases and lines ‘Bubbles gargled delicately, blue bottles (line 5) This shows that Heaney liked the disgustingness of nature, as ‘bubbles’ and ‘delicately’ create positive images where as ‘gargled’ and bluebottles, which or unclean flies, create negative images.

Catrin does this also ‘Trailing love and conflict’, love being positive and conflict being negative.

Heaney can often be seen as an Irish poet due to his use of language ‘mammy frog’ and the rural feel to his poems ‘All year the flax-dam festered in the heart of the town land’ this creates and image of fields and countryside, thus portraying that his poem is set in the countryside, maybe the countryside in Ireland.

In Catrin there is a sense of town, this is due to line 3, 4 and 5  ‘As I stood in the hot, white room at the window watching people and cars taking turn at the traffic lights’ this therefore means roads and congestion and then the hospital which are all characteristics of a town.

In Death of a Naturalist Heaney uses lots of similes and metaphors this is to illustrate his ideas in an interesting way. For example in line 28 ‘On sods; their loose necks pulsed like snails’ This is illustrating the frogs to the reader, by comparing them to something else it gives a rough idea.

He causes the frogs to look like an army, he uses words associated with the army ‘Invaded the flax dam’

‘Poised like mud grenades’

‘The great slime kings’

In Catrin, Clarke does the same ‘Red rope of love’ obviously symbolising the umbilical cord.

‘In the glass tank clouded with feelings’ representing a incubator containing the baby, and Gillian Clarke’s mixed feelings towards the baby.

There is assonance and alliteration in each poem, this is put in to make the poem ‘run smoothly’ and to stress certain words and phrases

Clarke uses this method in Catrin ‘With your straight, strong, long brown hair and your rosy defiant glare’

‘Straight and strong’ as alliteration, this makes you say this part faster and with more emphasis. ‘Strong, long’ being assonance to create more emphisis and also ‘hair and glare’ rhymes.

Both poems have nostalgia, as they are both looking back and reminiscing past. Heaney is looking back on his childhood ‘ then one hot day when fields were rank’

‘Miss Walls would tell us how the daddy frog was called a bullfrog and how he croaked and how the mammy frog laid hundreds of little eggs and this was frogspawn’ (line 15) Obviously his teacher from when he was younger.

Clarke shows that she is looking back on her past, she is looking back at the birth of her daughter, but then comes back to the present in her poem

‘I can remember you child’

‘Still I am fighting’

When I read Death of a Naturalist by Seamus Heaney, I felt he had described the atmosphere and his feelings wonderfully, he showed how he was interested in nature. I thought he showed clearly that he was looking back on his childhood, and how his feelings towards nature changed. I got many negative images from this poem, which I think was the aim, to show what he saw and felt.

In Catrin by Gillian Clarke I could very well imagine a woman in a white disinfected hospital room lonely and confused at first, then fighting to give birth. I can imagine how she feels towards the baby, and then the child more grown up, how they still fight, and how she struggles to cope with her daughter. I can see how she feels as she has shown her feelings so well.