To His Coy Mistress’s opening is filled with alliteration. Each of the first four lines contains alliteration: “We”/“world” (1), “coyness”/“crime” (2), “we would”/“which way” (3), “long”/“love’s” (4). This alliteration adds to the speaker’s playfulness and the poem’s beauty in the sections in which he is trying to woo his lover. The Backslappers however, uses alliteration to a much more negative effect, in line 9, it explains about boys boasting of “breaking down the barrier of mother tightened pant elastic”. This metaphor is very powerful, portraying underwear as a “barrier” whose purpose is to protect what is behind. The mention of the mother tightening the “pant elastic” makes it seem innocent, when still being in your mothers care.
In the middle of the poems, The Backslappers tells of one particular story, where the loudest of the group leads a girl to “the heaven of a darkened garage” and “to the tea-stained mattress erected to the worship of debasing.” This line really powerfully shows the underlying sleaziness in the poem, as especially with the line “mattress erected to the worship of debasing” which shows that the group of boys had this mattress as a shrine for every one night stand, the poem then goes on to say “His doubts are chased away as he fills his lungs, assured that they both enjoyed it.” Which tells us that the boys are too absorbed in their own ignorance to notice what they are doing is horrible. This is very different to the middle of To His Coy Mistress, where the person who the poem is based on is contemplating death, and never having a chance to sleep with his mistress, he shows this in line “But at my back I always hear Time's winged chariot hurrying near” the writer has used an interesting metaphor to show that age and time is catching up with him. This is not the only example, the line “The grave's a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace.” This tells us that nothing can be done about their feelings once he is dead, so they must sleep with each other soon. This particular passage of To His Coy Mistress shows that he only wants to sleep with her so soon, is because he may not have the chance in the future, but he presents this with much more positive language, and makes it seem more loving. The middle section of the poem also sees a great change of pace and tempo for To His Coy Mistress, as each stanza gets more aggressive.
The Backslappers then goes on to explain another of the boy’s stories, which leads into the end of the poem. This part of The Backslappers is very powerful, it tells of “his hand calloused and yellowed with tobacco running through her hair” This gives off a negative imagery of the situation, portraying him as un-anesthetically pleasing person, and having stained hands, the staining of his hands could have a hidden representation of him having countless girls virginity’s on his hands. It then continues with “He feels the slither of his lips Smearing her sister's lipstick, inexperienced and unwilling to learn.” This line represents the innocence of the victim, and exploits her inexperience. The fact that it is her sister’s lipstick, and that she may not own her own is a very powerful example.
The poet then goes on to say “Those sitting on sinks, in front of various phone numbers simply smile and count their belt loads of broken hymens, doubtless.” This line really shows the true colors of the boys in this poem, the line “Count their belt loads of broken hymens” Is extremely powerful, it being quite a disturbing thought, to know people actually do that. This in some ways is similar to the final stanza of To His Coy Mistress, as the poet is increasing the tempo more, and using more aggressive lexis, and appears to want the mistress to sleep with him more than ever. However, there is still much difference between the poems, as there is still seemingly no sleaziness to the poem, and it’s keeps true to it’s loving nature. The lexis in the last stanza becomes more like a description of the love making itself, rather than how he feels about the mistress, thus it becomes more aggressive.
In conclusion, I believe these two poems are both very effective in their goals, however their goals seem to be quite different. Although commonly themed on a sexual basis, they approach and execute the subject with great differences. I personally preferred The Backslappers, because I preferred the style in which it was written, the metaphors used, and the general feel of the poem, although I thought that To His Coy Mistress was written very well.