There are a few qualities of being old in the poem. If you are old like the anonymous man you do not have a worry in the world because you have no job you have to turn up to and nine o’clock or whenever. You have no business to run and all you have to worry about is to get the local paper every week and go shopping this is all that the have to worry about or something like that.
The other story is Warning this is totally the opposite of “old man old man”.
Jenny Joseph who is not old yet “when I am old” has written a poem the stanzas are free stanzas and the poem is not stereo typical. There are also no set number of lines.
Jenny Joseph Is longing to break out of the restricted life she lives as she lives a life of rules and she is not rude or does not do anything out of the ordinary. Jenny Joseph does not want to turn in to a boring old granny like most of them do.
She says to her husband, “you can grow fatter and eat a lb of sausages and heaud bear mats and other stuff like that”. She says that she will become a “rebel” “I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves summer gloves are trivelelous items (a luxury)
When jenny thinks about being old she thinks of all the things that she can do and leave all of the bad things behind you, and do all of the things that she did not do when she was younger “I will learn to spit”.
She is worried that when she is going to become this cool dood gran and not wear any clothes that match that her friend will get worried about her and start asking her questions. Most of her friends are probably going to be around the same age and so they will be offended if she says that the clothes that they ware are boring. Therefore, she is going to start wearing out of the ordinary clothes more often but not every day, well not for a while yet so people who know me will get used to it and are not to shocked and surprised when I do it all of the time.
In poems it is hard to compare and contrast as they are normally on a totally different subject and these two poems are on the same subject but are totally the opposite opinions or views on old age. In the “old man old man” poem you have smocked your timetabled cigarette this is similar to the bit when jenny is waiting to be old so that she can leave all of the boring stuff behind her. This is similar because they are both waiting for something.
There is another similarity between the two poems and this is that they are both about old age some are looking through good eyes and others bad eyes.
There is also another difference one is thinking about what they want to do and the other is what they used to do this show a completely different views on old age.
There is also another difference and this is that the man in the poem old man old man wants to be sensible and not learn to spit and other bad things like that. The character jenny Joseph from the poem warning wants to be crazy and wear outrageous clothes and not be boring, like the old man old man poem There are not many other similarities and differences that I can see.
In conclusion, I feel that the poems have been extremely well written by the two authors U.A. Fanthorpe and Jenny Joseph. The two poems are really like real life.
In the poem, warning by jenny Joseph the old lady has all of these plans for what she will do when she is older like learning to spit and spending all of he money on brandy and luxuries. But I think as she is not old now and she is planning all of this and by the time she is
fifty-five sixty she will not want to do all of these plans as she will have a medical problem. When you get older, you normally run out of energy very quickly and I think that she will run out and not want to do it all the time.
I do feel that the man from the poem “old man old man” will probabley start doing something like a small amount of DIY as if he carries on how he is he will get extremely board just sitting there.
