Poetry and Children.

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        This assignment is on the way in which childhood is presented by three poets who convey their thoughts and possibly their personal experiences in three poems, which I will try to analyse. The poets’ writing is heavily influenced either by their own childhood or by observing children who enjoy their time without responsibilities. The poems I will be looking at are R.S Thomas’s “Children’s Song;” “Blackberry Picking” by Seamus Heaney and another Heaney poem, a sonnet from the sequence called “Clearances” Number 3 is my chosen excerpt.

In the essay I hope to explain why I picked each poem and to suggest how the poet was influenced when writing these poems. The Heaney poems reflect his up bringing as a child growing up in the post-war years and height of the troubles. The R.S Thomas poem Children’s Song is very different in style as he attempts to how adults try to understand how children live in a world of their own. Adults try to get into this world but having left the innocence of childhood behind, they never will be able to rediscover those perfect years of innocent fun. The different experiences the poet’s own lives may affect the type of poems they have written e.g. some give us a happy view of childhood while others present a much grimmer look.

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The first poem was written by R.S Thomas and is named Children’s Song. This is a superb piece of writing done in block verse which suits this poem perfectly because it is as if is squeezed into a small area like a child’s world which adults are too big to get into. The subject is presented from the child’s eyes and in the first five lines the language is quite childish and easy to understand. All of sudden the poet changes this by using two or three words to help you get into an adult frame of mind although ...

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