Compare 2 Poems By Liz Lochhead And

Fleur Adcock Saying What You Find Interesting About Their Writing Styles And The Way That They Deal With The Subject Matter. Essay, Research Paper

Compare 2 poems by Liz Lochhead and Fleur Adcock saying what you find interesting about their writing styles and the way that they deal with the subject matter.

Katie Wilkinson

I have chosen to compare Liz Lochhead?s poem Revelation and Fleur Adcock?s poem Nature Table. Both poems describe young children?s first encounters with nature, their imaginations and suggests the passing of their youth. Liz Lochhead and Fleur Adcock have chosen a similar subject matter to explore but they have very different styles of writing in which to express their ideas.

Lochhead describes a young girls first encounter of ? Bob? the bull. To the child the bull represents all that she had ever feared existed.? I had always half- known that he existed- this Anti- Christ?. The imagery which is used to describe the bull makes him appear to be a mad, evil ? beast? because that is how he appears to the young girl. His ?black? ?darkness? and ?rage? is contrasted with the fragile, white ?well rounded? eggs. The ?placidity? of the milk is the opposite force to the ?anarchy? that the bull represents. The girl believes that the bull is a threat to the milk and eggs physically, but Lochhead suggests that they are also a threat metaphorically. Black has always traditionally been used to represent evil and death and the references to the ?Anti-Christ? and the double meaning to ?Black Mass? suggesting Witch craft reinforces this image. Lochhead is perhaps suggesting that the white eggs and milk represent the fragility and purity of childhood that are threatened by the evil forces in the world which the bull represents.

At the start of the poem we are told that ?They called him Bob- as though perhaps you could reduce a monster with the charm of a friendly name? I think that this could represent parents or even adults in general when she says ?They? and I think that she could be commenting on the way in which people try to shelter children from the upsetting or frightening parts of life. The eggs have the potential to be infant chickens, so it gives us a very maternal image of the girl protecting the eggs in the same way that ?They? are trying to protect her from the upsetting parts of life which the bull represents. The ?Revelation? in a sense is that the girl has uncovered a side of life that she previously only suspected existed. It is perhaps even commenting on the way in which humans try to protect themselves from the reality of death by using pleasant words to describe it e.g. ?passed away? ?moved on? in the same way that the the girl thinks that ?They? have given the bull a friendly name to describe what she sees as a ?beast?.

The eggs are described as ?well rounded? and ?self-contained? which is how both the individual and society would like to see themselves, but like eggs they are fragile and easily destroyed. The milk has connotations of motherhood and nourishment and it is only a young girls ?small and shaking hand on the jug?s rim? that is stopping the milk from spilling which further enforces the images of the vulnerability that the eggs and milk symbolise. The eggs and milk could also represent the aims of society and how the ?anarchy? that threatens it is always there, hidden in the shadows.

When the girl leaves the barn she is shaken by her experience ? I ran, my pigtails thumping on my back in fear? and it is as if this ? Revelation? has changed the way that she perceives the world. She seems to be more aware of the bad things going on around her

?the boys?who pulled the wings off butterflies and blew up frogs with straws?

?thorned hedge? and she senses her own vulnerability, she is frightened for herself and for the innocence and goodness symbolised by the milk which she must protect.

They egg imagery is continued in the last verse when the girl describes the ?harried nest? and being frightened of the eggs shattering, it is unclear if she is referring to the chicken eggs which she has been sent to fetch or the eggs in the nest but it could be either.

I can relate to what Liz Lochhead is trying to express in her poem because there have been experiences that have revealed to me an idea which I had never thought of before that have changed the way that I see the world. I think that she captures the sense of vulnerability and fear that people can feel when something happens to change the way in which they perceive their lives and how little control that they actually have. They realise that they really are as fragile as the eggs and that they actually don?t understand the world. The ?well rounded,

self-contained? world exists only in their imagination and the reality is that it is constantly being challenged by all the things which people will try to forget.

Nature Table describes a class of young children examining a tank of tadpoles. Fleur Adcock expresses each of the children?s personality through her description of their reaction to the tadpoles. Heidi is presented as a dreamer, she imagines that the snail is ?on her knuckle like a ring? and that there are ?purple clouds? that are like ?a sky for the tadpoles in their world?. Heidi gives an idea of what the girl in Revelation could have been like before her frightening experience , instead o