Essay Comparing Armitage And London

900 Words4 Pages
Explore the way writers use settings to present themes and ideas in the poems you have studied. In this essay I will be looking at the poems ‘London’ by William Blake and ‘A Vision’ by Simon Armitage. Both poets use a place for their setting, one an actual place; London, and the other based on a model for the future Huddersfield. Both poems are written in the first person, this helps the reader to visualise and understand the poet’s ideas and attitudes about the subject matter. Blake’s poem is set in 18th century London, where he writes about the things that he sees, hears and feels whilst out walking through the streets. It’s almost a rant set in ballad form, four stanzas long, each containing an iambic tetrameter with a basic ABAB…show more content…
The ‘curse’ could also insinuate that prostitutes were a curse on society, yet Blake uses the phrase ‘blights with plague’ which suggests that it was the sexually transmitted disease syphilis that was the curse. He emphasises this with an oxymoron ‘marriage-hearse’. The wealthy men sleep with the harlots then go back and sleep with their wives, spreading the killer disease. Syphilis destroys lives and harlots destroy families and family was the most important part of English society. Simon Armitage’s poem ‘A Vision’ is a contemporary piece based on a balsa-wood model of a new updated Huddersfield town, he had seen as a child in the local Town Hall. The poem is set out in a structured, orderly way like architecture. Five stanzas long, each containing 10 syllables, with a distinct but inconsistent iambic pentameter. The use of enjambment helps keep the poem flowing without breaking up the sentences. When recalling memories the poet writes in present tense and when describing the architect’s plans for the future he writes in the past tense, which keeps the reader guessing as to the poems timeline, past, present or future? Yet he never writes in the future tense, maybe he doesn’t want to consider what the future would be like from the present
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