A NIGHT IN
Darling, tonight I want to celebrate
not your birthday, no, nor mine.
It's not the anniversary of when we met,
first went to bed or got married, and the wine
is supermarket plonk. I'm just about to grate
rat-trap cheddar on the veggie bake that'll do us fine.
But it's far from the feast that -- knowing you'll be soon,
and suddenly so glad to just be me and here,
now, in our bright kitchen -- I wish I'd stopped and gone
and shopped for, planned and savoured earlier.
Come home! It's been a long day. Now the perfect moon
through our high windows rises round and clear.
Liz Lochhead
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/natpoetday/liz_lochhead.shtml
GIVE
Of all the public places,
dear
to make a scene, I've chosen here.
Of all the doorways in the
world
to choose to sleep, I’ve chosen yours.
I'm on the street, under the stars.
For coppers I can dance or
sing.
For silver-swallow swords, eat fire.
For gold-escape from locks and chains.
It's not as if I'm holding
out
for frankincense or myrrh, just change.
You give me tea. That's big of you.
I'm on my knees. I beg of you.
Simon
Armitage
http://www.thepoem.co.uk/poems/armitage.html
I’m going to talk about two poems by two differents authors:
“A night in” by Liz Lochhead and “Give” by Simon Armitage.
In the first poem, “A night in”, there are two stanzas
of six verses each one. The poem of Armitage, has five stanzas with a variety
in the composition of verses: two verses, three verses, three verses, two
verses and two verses.
The poems are very different between them, although in
the poem the authors talk about the same topic: love.
In the poem of Liz Lochhead, we can see connotations
of the feminism that caracterizes this authoress according to her biography (http://www.bbc.co.uk).
The authoress in the poem talks about her waiting for her love, she isn’t going
to follow the man although the man is her love. She wants the man to follow
her. In the poem, there are places that are related to the women by society:
kitchen, supermarket... These words can mean how the authoress feels: trapped
in the places or in the role that society says she must be in, like her own
rat-trap. The poem can mean the wish of freedom that she wants.
In the first stanza, the woman is talking about a
celebration, which can be the celebration of freedom using the methaphor of the
wine in the supermarket which is plonk and later is fine. She is the cheddar in
the rat-trap in the society of veggies.
In the second stanza, she talks more about the man.
She is the feast which is far of her love. She is waiting with everything being
perfect, as the moon in the sky, and so will be her love when he arrives...
In the poem of Simon Armitage, I think that he is not
reflecting any political or sociological ideology. It is a love poem, in which
the man is declaring his love to a woman.
In the first stanza, he talks about having chosen the
woman to whom he is talking. In the
second stanza, he has chosen her bed but he is far away, in the street. In the
third stanza, he is saying that he can do anything for her. At the end of the
poem, he is begging, he is declaring his love to her...he is coming to her.
In the two poems, the topic is the same, but there are
a lot of differences between them: The most important, in my opinion, is that
the authoress is expressing her feminism and her ideology in the poem, and
Armitage does not express anything else apart from what we can see.
At the begining of the two poems, we find two words of
affection: dear and darling. But it is Liz who uses the more affective word,
“darling”, because I think that, women usually like to use and show more
affection than men.
The poem of Simon Armitage is more general than Liz
Lochhead’s poem, who uses more everyday objects as the kitchen, the wine, the
supermarket, the moon...while the author uses places, the world, the street...
In conclusion, I think that, if you read the poems separately,
maybe you wil not be able to find a concrete characteristic of women’s or men’s
poems. But, if you compare the poems, there are differences, of ideology,
expression, etc. But, in my opinion, if the poem is great, it doesn’t matter if
the poet is an author or an authoress. The important thing is how it is
written, and how the feelings are described, and if the author/authoress can
make you feel as in the poem...
BIBLIOGRAFÍA
Editor: BBC
2006
Visited: 8/5/06
http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth165
Editor: British Council
Visited: 9/5/06
Academic year 2005-06
(may 2006)
©
a.r.e.a. / Dr. Vicente Forés López
©
Ana Raquel Montero Candela
amoncan@alumni.uv.es