The imagery in both poems is extremely vivid. At the start of ‘No More Hiroshimas’ the poem is describing how the city has been left nowadays: “a flimsy department-store” and “Racks of towers and neons”. This gives the city a cheap and artificial mental picture for the reader. The author contrasts pleasant images with unpleasant ones to emphasise this artificiality: “glitter frost and artificial pearls” and flatulent balloons.” The imagery towards the end of the poem becomes hard hitting: “The stopped watches, the torn shirts.” And “The twisted buttons.” This emphasises the impact and makes the reader think clearly of the images and how they might have got that way. The lines, “The cotton summer pants the blasted boys crawled home in, to bleed and slowly die.” This finalises the poem’s devastation to the city.
The poem ‘Belfast Confetti’ has very cluttered and confused imagery. “Nuts, bolts, nails and car-keys.” The author uses punctuation marks to emphasise this image. “Itself - an asterisk on the map. This hyphenated line, a burst of rapid fire” and “All alleyways and side-streets blocked with stops and colons” are perfect examples to show this.
The use of language in both poems is fairly simple. There is a frequent use of similes in ‘No More Hiroshimas’ such as, “a station, like any other city in Japan” and “Mr room an overheated morgue.” There is some emotive language at the end of ‘No More Hiroshimas’ when the author is describing the relics. “The ripped kimonos and charred boots” and “The stained and tattered vests and drawers” are good examples to show this.
In ‘Belfast Confetti’ metaphors are frequently used. “Raining exclamation marks” and “a fount of broken type.” Using these creates vivid mumbled images.
The structure of these poems is completely opposite. However, there is no rhyme scheme in either poems. ‘No More Hiroshimas’ is very slow paced and so there the images are more spread out and easy to understand. The poem has long line length and long stanza length. In the beginning when it is describing after the war it is more slow paced. Towards the end the pace slightly sped up. This is to emphasise the hard hitting ending.
‘Belfast Confetti’ is very disorganised and packed in. This gives it a fast and hurried pace making the poem muddled and confusing. This matches with the stanza length and overall length of the poem.
Personally I preferred ‘Belfast Confetti’. For me the poem was full of adrenaline and exciting. Along with the excitement came the fear, which made the pace seem faster. ‘No More Hiroshimas’ was too slow paced for me. The ending brought the reader pathos and had a big impact on me because of the imagery.
