Duffy's tone is somber,bitter and regretful and show the deterioration of her relationship, the words she uses such as "coldness", "dead" and "sour" indicate a lack of vitality in the couple and is also reflected in the house.
She also uses familiar and domestic language in her poem to create unpleasant and negative ideas of the couple's life in the house, to express these unpleasant images she uses hideous language: "thickening cyst", "how the stiffened and blackened", "from a dead place over the other", "woke to the absence of grace", "apples rotten to the core", "our garden bowing its head", "the house-plants trembling in their brittle soil" that make the idea of a desastrous relationship.She uses personifications to make the house feel how she feels: "sullen kitchen", "the fridge hardened its cool heart", "house-plants trembling in their soil", "the telephone pressing its ear to distant, invisible lips". The house is now moody and it has nothing special about it, it has lost its personality because there is no love or appreciation living in it. She also uses onomatopeic words to associate them with the noise that the house makes: "pining all day", "the fridge hummed", "rotten to the core". "The still-life of a meal, untouched, wine-bottle, empty, ashtray, full" this alliteration is used to demonstrate the monotony of her relationship, how it is reflected in their behaviour in the house, day a day.
The poem is structured into eight stanzas of four lines each, this structure might be to show the steady progression of the relationship, it gives the sense of monotony, predictability. Duffy uses enjambements to show how she can't control her anger "to make it worse...and worse", it shows the relentless decline of her relationship. "Total...disgrace", she is regretful for what has happened to her and she is ashamed for letting it happen, but she can't do anything about it. This continuous progression is also demonstrated by the degeneration movement from "words" in the beginning of the poem to "vowels" in the end of it. In the first six stanzas there is an unpleasant silence in the house, but it all changes in the last two stanzas, when the couple have a fight and there is more noise: "vulnerable flowers unseen in the dusk as we shouted in silhouette", "inconsolable vowels from the next room", there are no more words to explain her feelings.
The poem "Parting with a View" is relatively calm. The persona is at the stage when she has accepted her loss, but she has not reached a point in her grief where the familiar places give her tranquility, she still feels too empty and vulnerable to find solace in shared places. She is trying to come to terms with the loss of her loved one by a process of logical analysis and she has gone to a special countryside open space because she wants to leave the past behind and be able to live without her beloved.
The imagery of place used in this poem illustrates a lake in the country in the spring season, which juxtaposes with her feelings: "I don't reproach the spring for starting up again". She is constantly comparing the views with her feelings: "the grass blade may bend, but only in the wind" (she isn't engaged enough with life to tread on the grass), "clumps of alders above the water have something to rustle with again" (it symbolises the renewal of life), "the shore of a certain lake is still - as if you were living- as lovely as before" (it all keeps the same shape even though he isn't there with her, she isn't trying to see the view from an objective point of view, trying to be emotionless), "the surf, now diligent, now sluggish, obeying not me" (the stages of the wave reflect her emotional movements), "from the depths near the woods, first emerald, then sapphire, then black" (the different tones of the lake also reflect the different stages of her relationship, black is the colour of mourning). She even allows her imagination to picture other couples in her special place and she quite enjoyes this view: "that he holds her with a living arm ". On the one hand, the images used by Szymborska usually reinforce the idea of renewal of life, that contrast with the feeling of nostalgia and longing for her lover who is now dead. On the other hand, Duffy used the imagery of home to express the dacay and destruction that was happening within it, in the relationship.
The tone and the diction are very connected in this poem, Szymborska uses a very sober and emotionless tone to illustrate the view of the lake comparing it with her feelings, the language used is also very detached, analitical and even clinic, she has gone past the stage of emotional language and she is now rationalising her grief. The persona doesn't want to engage with her heart: "I don't reproach", "I know", "it doesn't pain me", "I take note", "I allow", "I don't resent", "I respect", these are all very distant ways of showing her feelings, she doesn't use typical language for love, loss and mourning, the tone she uses is calm and she is very rational about what she says and how she says it.The clinical language is used to explore very complex emotionsthat are generated by the view of the lake at springtime. The tone changes in the last two stanzas when she says she can allow everything but she admits that she will never be able to engage herself with life again: "The privilege of presence- I give it up", she recognizes that she has suffered a lot with this loss: "I survived you by enough, and only by enough to contemplate from afar". The persona cannot join life emotionally after the loss. While Szymborska uses sober tone and language that have a positive intention (try to get over the death of her lover), Duffy uses a regretful tone, with negative language that illustrate a house that is breaking apart, like the relationship.
Szymborska has divided this poem into thirteen stanzas of three to five short sentences each, each one reflecting a different view from the lake and she is accepting and allowing anything that might happen in this view that doesn't involve her: "it doesn't pain me to see that clumps of alders above the water have something to rustle with again". She is trying to control her grief by organising the poem into similar stanzas, but it is more natural and fluid than in Duffy's poem maybe showing that the natural environment where she is allows her to be less rigid, knowing that there is no solution and accepting the situation, because Duffy is trying to control really chaotic emotions, she has not gone past to the stage of emotionless.
On one side, the Carol Ann Duffy poem creates a more vital image because to her the house symbolises anger and despair.
On the other side, the Wistawa Symborska poem is much more morose and self-pitying, it is acceptance of her situation, but almost a "signing off" of life.
Personally, I found both poems very interesting, however I found "Parting with a view" more startling because there is a contrast between her view of spring and a lake with her emotions of mourning and sadness for the loss of her lover.
