Poetry+Comparisons

When comparing and contrasting two poems you must consider genre, audience, purpose, content, main ideas, themes and author techniques.

You will need to research the poets and context. With poems you should think about emotive word choice and connotations, form/structure, imagery (simile, metaphor, personification), rhythm and rhyme, senses including sound (alliteration, onomatopoeia) and tone. Other techniques to consider may be irony, euphemism, symbolism etc. You should be able to show how these contribute to the effectiveness of the poems and your enjoyment/understanding of them. and how these contribute to the effectiveness of the stories and your enjoyment of them.

You will need to quote throughout your essay using the Point, Evidence, Explain formula to analyse and evaluate.

Suggestion: Compare and Contrast Seamus Heaney's 20th Century "Mid Term Break" with Ben Jonson's 17th Century "On My First Sonne". Both poems deal with the death of a young child and the themes of grief and regret. "Mid Term Break" is the perspective of a brother while "On My First Sonne" shows a father's grief.