Comparing and Contrasting Poetry

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Comparing and Contrasting Poetry

Everyone has to deal with love. It can be in many different forms: emotional, spiritual, physical or intellectual. However, with love comes loss. It is so ironic that with the most beautiful and unique feeling comes such pain, loneliness and suffering. Losing someone can be the most traumatic situation some of us experience. Whether they die or love dies. The four poems I have studied have helped me to recognise this.

        ‘Funeral Blues’ is a poem written by WH Auden. It is about him losing his lover. His poem shows intimate and intense feelings. The dominant feeling that his very own world is dead. The first line is direct and attention grabbing. ‘Stop’, sums up the whole poem. He wants the world to stop all together. There is no need for the world to go on now – his partner is dead. He is expressing that he wants to be cut off from the world. His lover had died and so has he. Although he is not physically dead, his emotions have been crushed and his life has crumbled. Throughout the poem, the tone is solemn and sombre; ‘He Is Dead’. It comes through in the poem that he is extremely lonely and is in an initial state of denial. It is almost as if he wants to die too. He wants time to stop. He sees no reason for the world to go on.

        WH Auden talks of strong symbolic images as if they were some sort of ‘set’. All of these symbols representing love and life, have now become redundant;

‘The stars are not wanted now: put away everyone;

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun:

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.’

        I think that this last stanza implies that although the love was real and deep, now his partner is gone, it seems like a play. The final part of a play – where everything is taken down and although it existed, it is now gone. Only remembered. These are now ironic symbols – they do not represent what they are supposed to be for example, sun – energy or enlightenment.

        The poem has a rhyming scheme; rhyming couplets. It is like a hymn or a prayer, his last chant to his lover. This to me makes the tone more poignant and full of grief. The line that interests and inspires me most is;

‘He was my North, my South, my East and West’

        This is the strongest line in the poem. It implies how strong the love was. How much meaning it had to him. His partner was everything to him, in all aspects of life. Now there is no direction in his life – he is completely lost.

        WH Auden’s poem is inspirational. I have learnt that you should appreciate what your loved ones do for you and to treasure the time you have with them when they are with you.

‘Funeral Blues’ can be linked with ‘Praise song for my mother’ by Grace Nichols because it is also about the loss of a loss of a loved one. Although one contrast is, that Nichols highlights how her mother had such a positive effect on her and her life. Whereas Auden’s poem is about how he is in much grief and is in denial. Both poets compare their loved ones to a series of different elements.

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        Nichols’ poem is about her mother, and how she influenced her life in a positive way. It helps her to get through her death. Although it is not clear whether or not Nichols’ mother is dead or alive – it is clear she is gone in some way. The language is in the past tense; ‘You were…’ 

        She implies that without her mother – she cannot live. The thought provoking metaphor; ‘You were water to me’ justifies this. Water is an element of life – without water, no one can survive. ‘Deep and bold and fathoming’. This quote shows how powerful ...

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