For this piece of coursework, I am going to compare two Poems produced by Simon Armitage.

On the 6th stanza it says there was a rolled up note of explanation sprayed like a carnation. This gives us a hint that he committed to suicide. The words “explanation” and “carnation” both rhyme like a simile. It gives emotion to the poem from feeling sad about “his” death. He also had possession of a photograph that was in the shape of a heart. This has given a hint why he has committed suicide maybe because he lost a loved one. For example his wife, who would be important to him. “No gold or silver, but crowning one finger” states that he had a wedding ring and this links up to the previous stanza that he was married. “A ring of white unweathered skin. That was everything”. This also links to the 2 previous stanzas that he was married. The last line emphasis’s that it was the end of the person’s life and the clear reason why he committed what he did. So it comes to my conclusion that he committed suicide because he may have had a fight with his wife and she asked for a divorce. The language used in this poem is very simple but effective. The letter “A” was used in every sentence to give that effectiveness. The dead man is the subject of the title. The poet ends with the only item that the man did not have on him: his wedding ring. It signifies that the wife did not want him anymore and by drowning his sorrows, he threw it away. They must have not been married for a long time because the unweathered skin shows that he rarely wore his wedding ring. Although we know he must have had one on his finger, we do not know what happened to it. The fact that he still had a ring of white skin suggest he still felt he was married! The structure of the poem had a half rhyme in each stanza which gave effect because it made the audience want to read on because they became intrigued with the format of wording. I have sympathy for the man because anyone who forced to kill themselves is a victim. I don’t know what this poem is aimed at and what it is meant for, but it helped me think that I would never commit suicide. The word makes me feel nervous.

The second poem I am going to talk about is “Poem” and this is about an anonymous man’s life and it gives details about what he did. The title of the poem is ironic. It emphasis that the man’s life was not perfect and it show that nobody is perfect in this world. He was an ordinary person and treated the same as everyone else. In the first 3 lines of each stanza it describes him as a good person and the last line it describes one bad thing that he done. It shows there is a pattern emerging. For example: “And if it snowed and snow covered the drive, he took a spade and tossed it to one side, and always tucked his daughter up at night, And slippered her one time that she lied”. The consistent use of “and” sounds like we are joining the poem half way through and it helps the audience feel like they are with him. It shows here that he loved his daughter but he hit her for lying. It’s not unusual for that to happen because everyone gets hit in order to be disciplined. In the second stanza it shows that he saved money to keep the family wealthy and that shows he cares for his family but the last line states that he punched his wife in the face for laughing. It does show that he was kind to his wife for praising every meal she made but the violence used degraded him. It was very shocking to see a man hit a woman. But as quoted before, nobody is perfect. The third stanza showed how attentive he was to his mother but still he stole 10 quid from her purse. At the end of this poem it stated “Sometimes he did this, sometimes he did that” and this gave effect to the poem that nobody is perfect in this world. It is like an understatement of describing the whole man’s life to this and that! There are slang words used in the poem such as slippered, blubbered and quid. The reason for this is because they are trying to use words spoken in everyday language. The impression created showed that then man is not very intelligent by the English spoken. We do not have any information about this man, he is anonymous. It gives us an effect of being interested all about his life. There is a rhyming scheme in this poem and maybe it emphasis’s how predictable this mans life was. The tone of the poem made it even. If the man did one bad thing it counted for all the goods because it gave that feeling of regret every time he done a bad mistake.

The reason why I have chosen the poems “About his person” and “Poem” is because they both involve discussing about somebody’s life. They both have comparison in which they both rhyme in every stanza, the same words used at the beginning of every verse and the most important is it shows that nobody is perfect in society today. Armitage made the ordinary seem extraordinary by using such efficient language which made both poems enjoyable to read a second time. The structure of his poem very simple but this helped make it fascinating.