A comparison and contrast of James Fentons God and Seamus Heaneys Mid-term Break - Essay Example

The two poems chosen for this paper are: James Fenton's "God" and Seamus Heaney's "Mid-term Break. In this paper I will show how the poems are similar and different, what different elements of poetic style are used, and what the poems are about..Both poems were chosen because they seemed so powerful and dealt with a topic (death) that most people do not talk about. Both authors speak English but different versions of English. Fenton is English and Heaney is Irish. Both poems have a sort of flavor that gives the reader insight as to where the authors are from.

Heaney's "Mid-term Break" is about a young student that has been away at school for about six weeks and has been called home for the funeral of a younger brother. The poem guides the reader from him waiting in the school's sick bay all the way back home to viewing his brother's young body laid out for viewing surrounded by candles.Fenton's "God, A Poem" is about a friend's perception of what God is (or isn't). The reader is lead to believe that all that comes with death is a wormy underground.

The poem sounds as if it is one person challenging the beliefs of another. In the poem the friend strongly pushes his version of reality (God's nonexistence) on the other.Fenton's poem is a direct, in your face, kind of presentation. I can almost imagine the friend pointing his finger at the other as he speaks. And, the friend may have his hands on his hips as he pretends to be God in the fifth stanza. The author emphasizes the meaning of the poem by repeating the first and second stanzas and changing from a generalization (anyone) to a more direct "you're".

Heaney's poem takes a quieter, descriptive approach. Heaney walks the reader through the poem by describing what the young student sees and hears. Although the poem never states what he feels about what is happening, it leaves you feeling a bit sad. Both authors use figurative language. Heaney's poem uses personification when describing the "bells knelling classes to a close" and "snowdrops and candles soothed the bedside". Heaney might also have been using assonance by the repetition of the short "a" in the fifth stanza (at, ambulance, arrived, stanched, and bandaged).

Fenton uses allusion, a connection the reader might make, when he wrote "a grave disappointment" in the second stanza. Did he mean "grave" as in burial site or "grave" as in a very serious thing The reader is left to decide. Fenton uses tail end rhyme in his poem when he rhymes the first and third lines of each stanza, as well as the second and last lines. The rhymes echo the last syllable of each line. Heaney uses rhythm in his poem as each three line stanza describes another portion of the story.

In both poems the style chosen by the poets moves along the stories quite well. In reading Heaney's poem you almost expect that a forth line would be too much. But, in Fenton's poem the reader is expecting the forth line and the rhyme it contains. The speaker in Heaney's poem is a young student called home from school to attend his younger brother's funeral. The speaker in Fenton's poem could be a friend speaking his mind to another or it could be someone at a funeral talking to his dead friend as he lay in his coffin.

James Fenton's poem sounds as if it is one person speaking his mind to another while Heaney's speaker could be recalling the funeral to himself or another. Heaney's poem moves through settings. It takes the reader from the schools sick bay, to the porch and into his home, and finally up in a room at his brother's bedside. The poem that Fenton wrote does not describe a particular setting but could be one talking to another, or one at graveside. The theme in both poems is direct. Fenton's poem is more direct than Heaney's.

The tone of Fenton's poem leaves you believing he is talking about death and the hereafter ("and you are a diet of