Here are a few ideas to generate comparisons. Remember always consider the connotations of a poem’s title as well.
The Manhunt
Faith, intimacy, loss, the fragility of life and love, enduring love, loyalty, humane, tenderness, sustaining relationships, nurturing relationships, suffering, complex conflict, healing, transformation, delicacy, respect, acceptance, transcience, mortality, patience, acknowledgement.Reflective. contemplative. Reading love through the broken fragments of a broken body. Tracing the history of the relationship through the mutilated fragments of her husband’s body. Has some similarities to Mametz Wood in that the destroyed boy can be read again, resurrecting the lost self or lost silenced voice.
Sonnet 43
Ecstatic sonnet, a tribute to enduring love, elated, rhapsodic, the elation of love, transcendence, faith in love more powerful than religion, conventional belief system supplanted by the joy of this love. Sonnet form perfectly mirrors the emotional situation of the writer. Homage. Reflective. Clear-sighted acknowledgement. Purity. No counterargument. Celebratory. Assured.
London.
Angry, social criticism, suffering universal, exploitation, institutional corruption, poverty, social depreciation. Disease, degradation, dehumanizing conditions, oxymoronic description, power, powerlessness, impotence, sexual exploitation, greed, urban decay, the industrial revolution, oppression. Claustrophobic, rhyme scheme reinforces inescapable suffering.
The Soldier.
Patriotism. Blindness, Sonnet showing an unrealistic representation of war. Bloodless. Death is painless. England is personified. Mother country. Mortality without pain or regret. Reconciliation through death. No sense of conflict. Duty. Acceptance. Like propaganda.
She Walks in Beauty
Distance, enigmatic, shrouded in mystery, Unobtainable, fascination, admiration maintained through separation and distance. The woman is known only in fragments. Synecdoche. Elusive. Mysterious. Voiceless as the poem is Essentially about the poet. Woman anonymous. Night renders her other. Perhaps older. Married. Virtuous as does not return the poet’s interest. Not intimate. Shrouded in her own atmosphere and aura. Perfection is unsullied. Aesthetically appealing.
Living Space.
Precarious homes in slums. Suffering. Universal poverty. Urban landscapes show deprivation. Ephemeral. The fragility of life and human connection. Powerlessness. Yet faith. Joy. Defiance of human nature in face of adversity. Inspiration. Birth of new hope or despair as evidenced by the egg. Transcendence. What do human beings need to create a positive existence? Transformation. The poem defies expectations of poverty.
As Imperceptibly as Grief.
Loss is subtle. Delicately nuanced. Reflective. Seasonal mimicry of loss. Transformation. Mourning. Oxymoronic. Personal. Intimate poem. Epiphany. Acceptance. The opacity of human experience when under intense scrutiny and revelation or epiphany. Representation of grief. An unusual poem because of the idiosyncratic style captures a unique voice, striving to discover the most authentic expression for feelings of loss and change.
Cozy Apologia
Personal, intimate, good-humoured. Anchors their relationship to the intimate vicinity of the home. Practicality and wit despite the approach of a hurricane which does not appear to threaten or destabilise their love. Contentment is made concrete. Tangible relationship to love. Not a distanced intimacy, nor a cynical relationship either..
Valentine.
A cynical yet brilliant exploration of the progress of love through the bathetic, poetic conceit of an onion. Unlikely poetic conceit is both witty and then unnerving. Far from a celebration of love, this poem explores love’s cliches and failings. Unconventional. Poet seeking a conversation with the lover but fails to establish communication. Marriage seems a reluctant commitment only announced when all else has failed. Subversion of the stereotypes of love. The skeletal form of the poem gives a strange structure to this bleakly humorous version of love. Strong sense of the poet’s character.
A Wife in London.
Bleak, dismal setting mirrors the abject loneliness of the unnamed wife. She is a universal symbol of grief. War has abandoned women to desperately miserable often poverty-stricken fates. Pathetic Fallacy. Suffering is prevalent in the city. Loneliness is a disease. The intimacy of the couple despite their cruel, maybe financially necessary separation. The industrial expansion has left individuals stranded in broken communities. The wife is loyal. Faithful and so was her husband..Her suffering is palpable through the setting and environment. The world appears hostile to women. Transcience of intimacy and of life too. The cruel irony of the letter arriving after the telegram, yet her husband’s love transcends his death. Tragedy but perhaps some joy in their enduring connection. Love is not neglected. Pathetic fallacy is grimly employed. As if personal life has no place in this urban, materially driven world. Horrifying detail. The powerlessness of the couple. Both are Victims.
Death of a Naturalist.
Transformation is disturbing. Innocent, naive enthusiasm yielding to disgust. Different types of vitality although both parts still giving representation to the busy world of the flax dam. Adolescence brings with it the horror of knowledge. Sexuality is a threat. Childhood rapture usurped by knowledge of reproduction which destabilises the exuberant curiosity of the child. Shame is powerfully represented. Metaphorical death. The much-valued frogspawn has deceived the child. And he cannot forgive the adult world for being complicit with this deception. Catholicism instils a strong sense of guilt and sin. The poem reads like a form of bereavement. Formative experience. Divided between two versions of the dam which are vividly evoked or perceived through the changing sensory impressions of the maturing poet. Remembrance is vivid and powerful and highlights the linguistic brilliance of the narrator whose immersion in the opening delays his entrance as narrator in the poem. Once he changes his perception his immediate presence feels a terrible burden.
Hawk Roosting.
The human hawk sees the world as his feeding ground. Under his personal ownership. Believes in his ascendancy even omniscience. World Available to suit his hunger. Ruthless and egotistical eye/I. Compelling as no necessity for change. Different to other representations of nature. Evolutionary change is unnecessary. No hubris. Uncomplicated view. Grotesque humour. No diversion from himself. Human? Who is the bird’s predator? The hawk gives he is the perfect predator but he fails to acknowledge the human. So perhaps delusional
To Autumn.
Change is natural and accepted with equanimity. Transient seasons. The transience of life. Mortality. Keats is aware of his impending fate. Witnessed family members succumbing to tuberculosis. Death is inescapable. Romantic poem. Keats is a second-generation Romantic poet. Poet’s vision is of nature gifting him with a profound understanding of death. Romantic writers credit their perception with a visionary quality. Winding down the energy of the natural world. The rhythm of life changes with the .arch of the seasons. The personification of the season brings a vibrancy to the poem despite the exhaustion. Fecundity yields to mortality.
Afternoons.
A late 1950s poem. Inequality. Quiet, inarticulate suffering. Gender roles fixed. Women are bound by a conventional patriarchal society to bring up children and stay at home. Men have careers. They are skilled. Women are limited by their roles as mothers and wives. Women have been sold a romantic lie to encourage them to give up any liberty they might have enjoyed. Disappointment dominates the poem. The opening line is both literal and metaphorical. The cynicism in this poem seems more humane. The lie deceives everyone. Sacrifices are made without knowing why they are enacted. Such is the power of convention. Banality is an immersive human condition. Intimacy is described at a distance. Adventure reduced to the recreation ground. Nature is also depleted. The world is full of routines and resignation. Ironically, the women don’t even quite realise( or articulate) what they have lost. Freedom is an illusion. This is however a world observed by the academic poet, rather than inhabited. The poet is the lucky outsider looking in.
Dulce et Decorum Est.
The pity of war. Horrifying detail. Sensory impressions make suffering vivid and disturbing. Intensely revised world. Profound horror at the powerlessness of the Soldiers. Haunting vision. Nightmarish conditions. Utter disregard for life. Explosives and parathyroid show the discordant reality of the victims. Poet writes personally. He is bearing witness to the horror for the ignorant back home. Destroys the callousness of propaganda. Dramatic even within makes the poet’s message inescapable. Suffering is universal. Owen does not look away. Hence the visceral images he creates.
Ozymandias.
Hubris. The fall of the once-mighty dictator. The nest of the narrators gives the exotic distance to the terms of Ozymandias himself. Tyranny existed ways. Persistent through the ages. Ironically the attempt at stern life destroyed by the enemy that is time. Nature too has the power to bring ruins to human endeavours. The transience of human life no matter how important. A material world founded on the delusion of control and power. Futility. Epic madness. Defiance is seen as monstrous. Yet Art has transcended the limits of the human world and given the dictator some form of immortality. Witness presents the hubristic wreck. A strong moral message. Art defies the March of time. Sonnet is not loving? Ironically employed?
Mametz Wood.
Terrible mistake by callous generals. The senseless attack on a wood inhabited by the enemy guns. Nature is more benevolent now. Instead of sheltering the machinery of death, it has cared for the massacred young Welsh soldiers who were forced to obey a tragically stupid order. Victims of the powerful. The rich. Memory is like a form of Benevolent archaeology. The grotesque mass graves have become something more beautiful. The tender earth and kind farmers resurrect the past in a humane manner. Voices are heard again. The silenced soldiers can now be acknowledged. Relationship with nature changed. Reconciliation. Forgiveness granted.
Prelude.
Sense of remembrance being physically expressed. Exuberance. Freedom. Sensory details show youthful enthusiasm and independence. Frozen time in both literal and metaphorical sense. Haunting moment of recognition of ephemeral dusty of experience. Yet only a moment. Unambiguously happy remembrance. The disgust of Heaney is absent. Mortality and sent not threat in this poem. Autobiographical too. The poem is more about beginnings than endings. Ritualistic remembrance. Definitely a time of defiance and joy.
Really excellent suggestions and guidance for looking at this wide range of poetry. Very helpful
Prompts, much appreciated!