Each poem uses a different style of language to describe the child/parent relationship. In the poem ‘On my First Sonne’ the language is gentle and calm. Jonson wants his son to ‘Rest in soft peace’ and this expresses his tenderness towards his son and his acceptance that he has lost him. On the other hand the poem ‘Before You Were Mine’ uses more conversational language to convey the idea that the poet is talking directly to her mother. Phrases such as ‘You reckon it’s worth it’ give the poem a more personal feel to the poem. In comparison to this in the poem ‘Homecoming’ the poet uses ambiguous language for example lots of images and descriptions in the poem are quite vague and unclear. I believe Armitage has done this on purpose, to make us stop and think carefully about what the poet is trying to tell us. For example, ‘on their own and both at once’ this suggests that the trust exercise and the jacket are related in some way. The language in ‘Mother, Any Distance’ is always used to illustrate the relationship between the mother and son. For example a lot of measurement and distances are used in this poem, ‘single span’ which is a measurement but could also mean a ‘life span’.
The attitudes towards each parent/child relationships vary between the different poems. In ‘On My Fist Sonne’ Jonson creates a sad attitude. However the fact that his son is dead has allowed him to come to term with what has happened. He says that perhaps death is the best state to be in, as his son has ‘scap’d world, and fleshes rage’. Whereas in the poem ‘Homecoming’ there is a lot of tension in the atmosphere and anger too. In lines 8-10 the mother is very angry with her child.
The feelings about the relationships in the pre 1914 poem are less clear cut. In ‘Before You Were Mine’ the poet admires her mother’s rebellious life before she was born; she calls her mother ‘Marilyn’, which shows she sees her as a glamorous mother. However the poet seems to think her own birth deprived her mother of this exciting life, forcing her to be responsible. In comparison to this in the poem ‘Mother, Any Distance’ the poet appreciates the fact that he can turn on his mother if he needs her. He accepts that his mother will only be a very small part of his life, ‘the last one-hundredth of an inch’. When the poet says ‘I space-walk through the empty bedrooms’ he implies that he is excited as well as nervous as he is breaking free from his mother and is starting a new big adventure by himself. ‘Endless sky’ He feels there is no limit to the opportunities open to him. They cant be measured like the walls they measure at the beginning of the poem. In the poem ‘Homecoming’ colours are mainly used to represent the feelings of the poet, ‘You seeing red, Blue murder’ here the colours represent strong words and emotions.
All of the poems use metaphors to illustrate where their personal parent/child relationship. The poem ‘Mother, Any Distance’ I think uses this technique the most effectively. ‘Years between us. Anchor. Kite.’ Here the mother is seen as the anchor and the son is the kite flying out away into freedom, although the son is still attached to his mother that he can only have a certain amount of freedom and independence. ‘You at the zero-end, me with the spool tape’ this is another good use of a metaphor used in this poem. It is saying that the mother ‘You’ at zero which is the beginning, a fixed number whereas the son is at the other end changing numbers all the time. ‘Your fingertips still pinch’ is another good metaphor used in the poem ‘Mother, Any Distance’ meaning that the mother won’t completely let go of her son. The other poem by Simon Armitage, ‘Homecoming’ uses a lot of colours to represent specific things. In the second stanza a yellow jacket is mentioned, ‘canary-yellow cotton jacket’ and at the end of this stanza two more colours are mentioned ‘You see red. Blue murder’. I believe Armitage is using these colours as a metaphor, they are the three primary colours and they are bold and striking representing the three basic reactions which a parent would have after a new jacket has been ruined. I also believe that the first colour used yellow implies that the jacket is vivid and colourful unlike the darkness and uncertainty of most of the memories in this poem. Another use of metaphor in this poem is the phone box, ‘I’m waiting by the phone’, I believe this is an image of freedom. In the last stanza the boy is also seen as the jacket and this poem can be linked to the pre 1914 ‘On My First Sonne’. There is also a variety of metaphors used in this poem, ‘Jonson his best piece of poetrie’ I think this is also saying that his son was his best creation and Ben is comparing his poetry to his son. Another example of metaphorical language used in ‘On My First Sonne’ is the third line of the poem. Ben here has used money as a metaphor, Jonson’s son was ‘lent’ to him for seven years and now he has to ‘pay’ his debt through the death of his son. ‘Before You Were Mine’ uses metaphors to illustrate the relationship between the mother and daughter.
Overall in all of these poems the point of view is written from either the son or daughter except for the Pre 1914 which is written from the father’s point of view. Each poet expresses their own personal feelings differently about their parent/child relationship.