Poem Nettles
When analysing poems 'Netttles ' and 'born yesterday ', both are similar in how they show a parents love and responsibility for a child. While 'Nettles ' highlights the anxieties that a parent has for their child, the latter deals with the hopes a parent can wish upon their child. Both use various language techniques and structure to convey how parents can have different ways of expressing their relationship and love for a child.
Born yesterday depicts this love for a newborn baby, but this poem is written in a more hopeful, unconventional manner. The first stanza of Born Yesterday highlights his views of what “the others*( seeming to mean most people) hope for in a newborn, which comes across as fairly sarcastic and almost as if he despises upon this general opinion of your child having the best things that life can offer. This sarcasm or mocking appears to be shown in the line “running off a spring of innocence and love”. In the fourth line he uses the term “usual stuff , which further highlights this negative opinion as Larkin seems to think they are boring and non-realistic. His love for this baby is comes across in a specific way and is fairly unusual almost as if he is just writing it in hope, for example in the last line of the first stanza “well, you 're a lucky girl”
These unconventional aspirations continue into the second and final stanza where he gives a more personal view on how he would like to see this child grow up. Despite the repetition of negatives that he uses such as towards the end its still clear that he cares deeply about this child 's future as it is still written with positive hopes. The oxymoron on the third line “An average of talents”, expresses that someone that is not at rock bottom but still not having many luxuries at the same time can result in the baby having a happy life, and this sums up the overall message that Larkin is getting across to the audience. This can even be seen before on the second line where it could be said
Born yesterday depicts this love for a newborn baby, but this poem is written in a more hopeful, unconventional manner. The first stanza of Born Yesterday highlights his views of what “the others*( seeming to mean most people) hope for in a newborn, which comes across as fairly sarcastic and almost as if he despises upon this general opinion of your child having the best things that life can offer. This sarcasm or mocking appears to be shown in the line “running off a spring of innocence and love”. In the fourth line he uses the term “usual stuff , which further highlights this negative opinion as Larkin seems to think they are boring and non-realistic. His love for this baby is comes across in a specific way and is fairly unusual almost as if he is just writing it in hope, for example in the last line of the first stanza “well, you 're a lucky girl”
These unconventional aspirations continue into the second and final stanza where he gives a more personal view on how he would like to see this child grow up. Despite the repetition of negatives that he uses such as towards the end its still clear that he cares deeply about this child 's future as it is still written with positive hopes. The oxymoron on the third line “An average of talents”, expresses that someone that is not at rock bottom but still not having many luxuries at the same time can result in the baby having a happy life, and this sums up the overall message that Larkin is getting across to the audience. This can even be seen before on the second line where it could be said