The poems I am comparing in this essay are 'Half-past two' and 'Reports' by U.A. Fanthorpe and 'Leaving school' by Hugo Williams.

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20th Century Poetry comparison

The poems I am comparing in this essay are 'Half-past two' and 'Reports' by U.A. Fanthorpe and 'Leaving school' by Hugo Williams.

All three of the poems are about school, and about the different aspects of it. There are several points of view expressed in the poems, such as that of a teacher, the confusion of a child starting boarding school, and a child who cannot tell the time.

In the poem 'Half-past two', the poem tells of a child who, after being told off as been told to stay inside until half-past two and then he can go. To the dismay and confusion of the child, he cannot tell the time and so wonders what to do when and if, half-past two ever came. In this poem, the style is very much that of a child speaking firsthand to himself and thinking in his head. The poem begins with 'Once upon a...' which is a harsh cliché of old fairytales of which the majority of them started in this way. In the first paragraph, as he is so young he did 'something very wrong' but then carries on to say that