Poetry Essay - Anaylsis of 9 Poems

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In this piece of coursework I am going to analysis and compare a number of poems, some written by the same authors and some by different authors. All 9 poems have one common link which is: Youth.

The first poem is called “Stealing” and it was written by Carol Ann Duffy. This poem is about a troubled young man who takes away a snowman from someone’s garden and talks about other items he has stolen before such as a camera.

In this poem there are certain words and phrases which you can relate to your sense of sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste. For example when he describes the snowman as “A mate with a mind as cold as the slice of ice,” which you can use your sense of hearing and hear someone cutting through the ice. Also where he says “I was standing alone amongst lumps of snow,” where you can picture this person standing there alone with a snowman crushed at his feet. I think this add enjoyment to the poem as it is getting you to see, hear, feel exactly what is happening in the poem which makes it more real. He uses a lot of metaphors. For an example he talks about the snowman being as “cold as the slice of ice within my own brain” and “a fierce chill pierced my gut,” where he is talking about the snowman on the outside but also talking about how he feels on the inside, cold and lonely.

In this poem the poet has chosen to separate the events and place a stanza in the middle, so the poem starts off talking about the snowman and what it feels like but the third verse talks about the person’s life and then back to talking about the snowman. I think the poet has done this to add more effect to the poem, as it indicates that the person in the poem does not understand themselves let alone explain them self to anyone else. Also that they think about their lifestyle a lot and that they do not understand why they do what they do.

In this poem there is no rhyme. I think this is because the poet wants to make the poem sound more serious and realistic than childish with loads of rhyming words.

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