Section B pre 1914 and post 1914 poetry Essay Example

Section B: pre 1914 and post 1914 poetry Essay 22. Compare the way the poets present family relationships in two poems from List A and two from List A. Family relationships are evident in many of the poems in the anthology, they are central to most peoples lives, and the poems present how these relationships can change with age, and how they often fraught with conflict. I have decided to analyse: Digging by Heaney, Baby-sitting by Clarke, The Affliction of Margaret (TAOM) by Wordsworth and On my first Sonne (OMFS) by Jonson. In Digging, Heaney presents a relationship that spans three generations; the author, his father and his grandfather. The respect, admiration and love with which the young Heaney feels for his elders contrasts with the poets admitted apathy and coldness towards an unrelated child in Baby-sitting: I dont love / This baby. In TAOM, Wordsworth uses powerful imaginary to portray a mothers tormented anguish over her fragmented relationship with her son. Seven years, alas! to have received / No tidings of an only child, she laments. In OMFS, the poet writes as though he is talking to his much-loved son, and suggests that his greatest achievement, his best piece of poetry; is the boy. Both poems involve strong, powerful emotions: the love that a parent feels for their child, both parents grieve for their children, although in Affliction of Margaret the exact fate of the child, now an adult, is unknown. 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He says, Ive no spade to follow men like them as if he knows he lacks their strength and perseverance. Once I carried him milk in a bottle / Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up / To drink it, then fell to it right away. The phrase corked sloppily with paper suggests that the author feels inadequate, he brings refreshment but his father is so absorbed with his task that he only pauses briefly to drink, unaware of the boys presence. By the end of the poem, Heaney feels more triumphant and hopes to gain the same pride and sense of worth with the use of a pen as previous generations did with a spade; The squat pen rests. / Ill dig with it. The poem ends with this emotional phrase as the poet reconciles himself by drawing similarities from the pen and the spade. Similarly, TAOM and OMFS are poems in which the protagonist idolises a family member. In TAOM, a woman called Margaret worries over her son who disappeared 7 years ago, and even though the reader never meets the son, he is an important character in the poem. Margarets memories of her son are warm, loving and positive, she says He was among the prime in worth, / An object beauteous to behold. However, Margarets love appears to border on obsession, and the reader wonders whether Margarets suffocating adoration of the child offers a hint of the true reason for the sons absence and lack of contact. Margaret says, Of Him I wait for day and night, the capital H reflects Margarets infatuation and worship of the absent child, as a deity. Jonson also expresses strong emotions similar to Margarets in OMFS. Jonsons relationship with his son was such that; upon the childs passing, Jonson actually says he envies his son, because in heaven you do not have to deal with all the travesties that happen in life: For why / Will man lament the state he should envie?. The poem is written as though Jonson is talking directly to his son: thowert lent to me, and I thee pay. This is a very personal sentiment, and the reader really feels how close he and his son were, as though the poem is intended to be his childs eulogy. Jonson also uses language found usually on gravestones, for example: here doth lye; this enforces the fact that the poet is writing a speech in praise and tribute of his recently deceased child. A poem which depicts a dysfunctional, abnormal parent/child relationship, is Baby-sitting; in the poem, Clarke skilfully uses language to present her feelings as a mother looking after someone elses child, in a house which isnt hers. Clarke almost sounds emotionless at times, and describes the baby in an uncaring, business-like way: She is a perfectly acceptable child. She feels detached from the girl and seems to see her as an object and an inconvenience, rather than a human. Clarke even uses the recurring semantic field of witchcraft with phrases like: enchant and familiar, to suggest that the child is otherworldly.