Three poets present City life as influential when they describe the people and the surroundings. Firstly, during ‘A London Fete’, Patmore uses blatant text to bring out the power of the city as people go ‘forth to fight’ once the dreadful event was over. Towards the end of the poem influence is highlighted blatantly as a ‘baby strung its doll to a stick’ explaining that the show has affected all ages. Patmore often uses the people in the city to represent city life as a group union when ‘mothers held up their babies to see’ and ‘these blasphemed and fought for places’ suggesting that everybody is there wanting to see the hanging, almost fighting to get a view. Not just in this poem is authority represented, also in ‘London’ by Blake, he uses the repetition of ‘every’ during the middle of the poem, very obviously to show the city as a universalised place, even though this poem is written implicitly. The ‘Harlot’s Curse’ is used along with other negative symbols like ‘ban’ and ‘weakness’ to make it universalised in a completely opposite way. This is extremely similar to ‘In Praise of Cities’ as Thom Gunn also does this, but a lot more subtlety. He uses ‘irresistible’ in an enticing and entrapping way making the negativity seem positive. ‘You stay’ highlights the influence because you feel like you had been given the choice to leave but you had been directed into staying. These three poems show city life as dominant plenty of times, in obvious and masked ways at different stages throughout.
Throughout these three poems poets have used unnatural images to highlight the unusualness of the city and city life. ‘In Praise of Cities’ by Thom Gunn has many examples of this, firstly ‘Her pavements desolate in the dim, dry air’ highlighting the stop of growth. ‘Desolate’ is to feel empty and alone, ‘dim, dry’ are images of lack of growth, this showing the negativity in life as an all round place, all the same. The author uses ‘hard ornaments’ highlighting images as these words would not usually be associated together as ornaments are ornate and fragile, whereas hard is a forceful word which denotes the harshness to the attractive piece. Gunn has chosen the title very carefully as the city is not something that was praised in the era of this poem; countryside’s and natural things were a lot more the style. The city in this poem is used as an unnatural image all round unlike ‘A London Fete’, which only uses certain parts to make it seem unusual and it is not at all blatant. Coventry uses animalistic words such as ‘roar’ and ‘crowed’ to represent the urban culture as fierce, roar is used along side a girl so it has made the female seem predatory. Paradox’s such as ‘wicked treat’, ‘horrid hope’ and ‘damned rejoices’ are used by Patmore to highlight the city as disturbed and back to front making the city seem unnatural. ‘Glee’, a strong word for happiness, maybe a bit too strong, maybe overly exaggerated making the city seem negative. These poems show the city as unnatural as well as ‘London’ does, but ‘London’ is showing this a lot more covertly. William Blake, right at the end of the poem, has used ‘Marriage Hearse’ which shows marriage as negative. Marriage is most probably one of the best moments in someone’s life but when followed by hearse, the moment is destroyed and made seem negative. ‘Hapless soldiers’ is an unusual image as hapless is to be unlucky whereas soldiers are supposed to be winners; they are just cancelling each other out making the images also seem harmful. These poems all show the city and city life as unnatural in different ways not making it seem at all blatant.
Throughout the three poems there is a strong sense of lure, enticing you to the city. Firstly, during ‘London’ by William Blake, there are examples of positive images such as ‘marriage’, ‘child’ and ‘church’, which would usually attract people, but negative signs like ‘hearse’, which slowly draws the reader in, follow them. The lure of the city in ‘London’ is not as powerful as it is in ‘In Praise of Cities’, which uses strong vocabulary. The poem by Thom Gunn uses the sexual overtone to attract people to the city. ‘Love making’ is an example of sex and it highlights the lure because people are attracted to love and all that comes with it. Here the lure is presented as sexual whereas in ‘A London Fete’ by Coventry Patmore the crowd and the joining as one attract you. ‘Joined the roar’ highlights the fact that everyone has the experiences of being in a community. ‘Fought for places’ also brings out this same effect but shows it as much more violent, however this will still attract people. Lure is highlighted many of times during the three poems but in completely opposite ways.
