‘On My First Sonne’ by Ben Johnson and ‘Mother Any Distance’ by Simon Armitage Essay

From reading ‘On My First Sonne’ by Ben Johnson and ‘Mother Any Distance’ by Simon Armitage I can see that both of these poems are based on a parent/ child relationship. There are two main types of relationships one is where two things interact an example of this could be a car on a road. This would show us how us how the two things would fit with each other. The other type of relationship which we could have would be things such as Marriage, by Blood etc. In the Poem Mother Any Distance the relationship in it is both of those two described above because there is a relationship between the two people which is very straight forward who could be measuring and there the close relationship between the mother and son by blood. In Mother Any Distance both of the parties are still alive therefore the relationship between the two parties is able to continue, therefore the relationship between the two is able to change through out their live. Where as in On My First Sonne one of the parties is dead this then leading into a fixed relationship between the two existing in the memory of one. By looking at both of these poems I can see that the structures of these two poems are completely different. When looking at it for the first time you can clearly see that Mother Any Distance has three stanzas where as On My First Sonne there is only one stanza. By reading the poem On My First Sonne the one stanza completely makes sense, but if you just read one stanza in isolation in Mother Any Distance you can get different views about the situation depending on which stanza you read. If you read all three stanzas (as the poet intended), it changes again showing that there is a relationship between the three stanzas. In On My First Sonne you can see that there are rhyming couplets throughout the poem. Whereas in Mother Any Distance there is only two sets of rhyming couplets this is at the end of the first stanza and at the end of the third stanza which seems to finish the poem with a flourish. In this poem I can see that there are internal rhymes some of the lines rhyme and some do not. Old things such as God and fate are used in the poem On My First Sonne. This shows us that this poem is older than Mother Any Distance. In Mother Any Distance things are slightly more modern such as ‘Space Walk’. On My First Sonne there is a lot of rhetorical questions such as ‘ O, could I loose all Father, now.’ There is a use of enjambment in the one poem Mother Any Distance ‘ up the stairs, the line still feeding out, unreeling years between us. Anchor. Kite.’ This is enjambment because you could jus read the line saying ‘ up the stairs, the line still feeding out, unreeling’ this would make perfect sense in which the context it is used in but, if continue to read onto the next line without stopping it still makes sense. Both poems are clearly a conversation between the writer and the subject of the poem. Because, Ben Johnson is talking to his dead son and Simon Armitage is talking to his mother. Mother Any Distance uses a extended metaphor which is the tape measure. The ways in which he is able to do this is by explaining the emotional distance between his mother and himself and by explaining how to measure a room, ‘unreeling years between us’. In My First Sonne there is also a extended metaphor which is the loan of his child from god ‘Seven yeeres tho’wert lent to me and I thee pay’. When reading Mother Any Distance I get a powerful image of the son space walking through the empty bedrooms. The language in both of these poems is completely different this could be to the fact that they were completely different people but the main reason is due to the fact that they both lived in completely different worlds. Sonne uses words like ‘yeeres’ and ‘miserie’ which are Middle English words whereas the words in Mother are Modern English words. In Mother Any Distance the words that stood out to me where ‘Anchor. Kite.’ This stood out to me due to the fact that these two items are completely different to each other and sum up the whole poem. The words that stood out the most to me in On My First Sonne were ‘and fleshes rage,’ this caught my eye because the expression ‘fleshes rage’ is more powerful than just using the words growing old. ‘To have so soone scap’d worlds’ quoted in line 7 in On My First Sonne is alliteration. The themes of the poems are the same because they are both writing about their feelings towards a blood relative. They both express their feelings of loss towards someone for whom they feel affection. However in some ways the poems are quiet different this being due to the fact that in ‘On My First Sonne’ Ben Johnson is the father who has lost a blood relative whereas in Mother Any Distance it is the child who is losing a blood relative. The difference being is that Ben Johnson blames himself for the tragic incident because that is generally what parents do, ‘My sinne was too much hope of thee’. Simon Armitage is the child and does not blame anyone for the what is happing he just believes that it is the way of life. On My First Sonne Ben Johnson has no doubt about how he feels about his son whereas in Mother Any Distance Simon Armitage is unsure about how he feels for his mother. Both of these poems don’t really make me feel anything in particular, but I did feel some sympathy for the mother in Mother any Distance. I did feel sympathy because I think that the mother probably didn’t understand how her son was feeling about her. On the other hand I do feel some empathy for Ben Johnson in On My First Sonne this was due to the fact that I have also lost a blood relative in my life. This means that I was able to connect to the poem easily because I was able to put myself in his situation. I hope that my relative has found ‘ Rest In Soft Peace’. I had a preference for Mother Any Distance due to the fact that the language was more modern and was easier for me to understand. This was probably because it was written by a younger person and it was also written a long time after the other poem.