Poetry

Compare and Contrast Poetry Paper

The two poems I chose are Lord Randal by Anonymous and Mid-American Tragedy by Denise Levertov. Although these two poems are somewhat different from each other, there are several ways in which they are the same. In each of these poems you see the difference/similarities in the way it was written, who is speaking in the poem, the setting/theme of the poems and the fact that both these poems are dealing with death. These two poems show us the significance of how unlucky some people are. Some people are not very fortunate to have loving parent's who care for them no matter what the circumstances are. These poems make us actually sit down and think about how some people's lives actually are. To me a good parent/child relationship would consist of the parent and child having a close caring relationship in which both parties feel comfortable expressing their thoughts and feelings followed by an understanding of one another. Lord Randal and Mid-American Tragedy teach us how some parent/child relationships really are in the world today.

In Lord Randal and Mid-American Tragedy as you read the poem you get the sense that the parent's are the one's talking. For example in Lord Randal it reads "O where ha you been, Lord Randal, my son?" (Anonymous 1). By looking at this sentence you know that the mother is talking to her son. In Mid-American Tragedy you know the parent's are talking because it says; "he's our kid" (Levertov 9). This shows that the parents are talking about their son. However, In Lord Randal you also here the voice of the son talking, but in Mid-American tragedy you do not hear the son's voice at all through out the poem.

There are many different types of themes a poem can construct of. For example, there are romantic poems, comical poems and tragic poems. Lord Randal is more of a comical poem. In Lord Randal the mother asks her son many silly questions to find out who's getting what when he passes away. The setting of the poem help's the reader relate to the mother's reaction to her son's death, because this poem takes place a while back when women could only rely on the man of the house to support the family. If her son dies she has nothing but the things he has left her. This makes it comical because the mother keeps repeating the same question but with different names at the end of it. The mother repeats; "What d'ye leave to your mother, Lord Randal my son?" (Anonymous 25). The narration in a comedy often involves union and togetherness as we see this in the poem when the mother and son are talking one after another. In a comical poem you will also see that there is unnecessary exaggeration. You notice this when you read the poem and see that the mother is so worried about how she is going to live without her son's money. On the other hand Mid-American Tragedy is more of a tragic poem. You can tell it is a tragic poem just by reading the title. A tragedy is usually a drama or fictional work in which the main character is brought to ruin or suffers extreme sorrow, especially as a consequence of a tragic mistake, or inability to cope with critical circumstances. This is a tragedy because the son is dying from a disease. There is nothing comical about this poem at all. The parent's play a big role in this tragedy because it is also tragic that the parent's don't care much for their dying son.

In each of these poems both sons' are ill and dying. In Lord Randal the son has been poisoned by his sweetheart. "O yes, I am poisoned; mother, mak my bed soon" (Anonymous 23). The son keeps repeatedly asking his mother to make him his bed so he can lie down, but the mother doesn't seem to care much about making his bed. It seems as though his mother doesn't really care about the fact that her son is dying. She wants to just find out about where all his money is going. A caring mother would have done what he wanted and made him his bed so he would be able to lie down. I also feel that the mother had something to do with the death of her son. It seems strange to me that she asks her son at the end of the poem what he is going to leave to his true love. "What d'ye leave to your