A Level English Literature help ASAP!

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Can someone please PLEASE give me some feedback? I would appreciate it very much! Many many thanks in advance!

Compare the ways in which poets explore loss in Material by Ros Barber and Effects by Alan Jenkins from Poems of the Decade: An Anthology of the Forward Books of Poetry 2002–2011.*

In your answer you should consider the following:*

the poets’ development of themes*
the poets’ use of language and imagery*
the use of other poetic techniques.
the poet’s use of structure and form

Both Material and Effects explore the theme of loss but from two different perspectives. In Effects, Jenkins recollects memories of his mother before her death and highlights his guilt towards his ignorant and impatient actions and his lack of understanding about his mother’s emotions and her hardships. Here Jenkins explores the idea of loss, and the lasting impact it can have on an individual both physically and emotionally. In Material, Barber takes us through the speaker’s youth and explores her mother’s love of handkerchiefs, contrasting it to the speaker’s current state of living. The poet explores loss when the speaker remembers a time in her youth that has disappeared and what the aftermath of that remains i.e. what that means for the present while simultaneously highlighting the speaker’s nostalgia towards it. The tone in both poems are quite reminiscent, melancholic and sad as well as filled with guilt. For example, In Effects, the reader can sense the speaker’s guilt and sadness due to the loss of their mother when they state: ‘but of course I left; now I was back, though she could not know that’. This may make some readers feel irked towards the speaker, as they clearly show a lack of appreciation towards their mother when she was alive, but it may also make some readers feel sympathy towards the speaker as they finally understand their misdoing but it is too late to change anything. Similarly, in Material, a strong sense of sadness can be seen through the personification ‘Nostalgia only makes me old’ which is one of the shortest lines of the poem. This helps contrast this idea against the long, almost rambling sentences of the previous stanza in a relatively abrupt way. It makes the reader question why the narrator has been sad and nostalgic up to this point, which in turn indicates that the narrator feels ‘old’ in relation to the huge*changes in societal attitudes since their childhood, hence in a way, they feel nostalgic due to the loss of the speaker’s way of life in their youth. The theme of guilt is built in the quote ‘I raised neglected-looking kids the kind whose noses strangers clean’ magnifying further the loss of a way of life and a whole generation.

Both poets explore loss when they reflect on the repercussions of having lost their mothers. However, in*Effects,*the speaker does it through remembering their late mother and emphasising the aftermath of their death. Firstly, the poem is written as an interior monologue. This dramatic narrative technique may have been utilised by the poet to exhibit the overflow of emotions they feel, followed by their mother’s death which includes guilt and confusion. This links to the structure of the poem; it lacks a consistent rhyme scheme. A reader could potentially infer how this very lack of consistent rhyme scheme reflects the sort of confusion that accompanies loss. As the poem goes on, he regains some of his ‘old self’ back and comes to terms with their loss, which could be proven by how the poem reaches its end with a rhyming couplet, bringing emphasis to the end and the words ‘see’ and ‘me’, perhaps representing a greater sense of clarity which the narrator is achieving, meaning that he is finally able to see his mother in a completely different light now that she is dead. It is also quite interesting to note how the very first line of the poem states ‘I held her hand’ but later, after the poem shifts it becomes ‘the hand’ which suggests that after the loss of their mother, they have already become a distant memory, evoking a strong sense of despondence from the reader. Moreover, the speaker feels a great sense of guilt after having lost their mother. Throughout the poem, the only two references we get of the speaker’s attitude to their mother is when they state ‘Watching soap operas I’d disdain’ and ‘I was born, grew up and learned contempt’ where the negative verb ‘disdain’ and the noun ‘contempt’ makes the speaker’s self-criticism and guilt more explicit to the reader, leading to some of the readers picturing as a son who was incompetent of returning the love him mother gave him. This interpretation is strengthened by the fact how the plaintive last words of the mother before they died to her son was ‘Please don’t leave me’, but the son ‘left anyway’. It is a simple yet highly effective line that is made even more important due to the italicised text so as to place additional audible and visual emphasis on the plea of the mother. Not only does the poet only explore loss through the narrator, but also with how the mother, when she was alive, dealt with her husband’s death. I previously talked about the lack of a consistent rhyme scheme reflects the emotional conflict of the narrator. Alternatively, this could also reflect the confused mental state of the mother as later in the poem ‘night after night’, the mother had ‘drink after drink’. The diacope employed here is very effective to the reader as they could interpret a sense of hopelessness that also comes with losing someone you love, particularly as both ‘drink’ and ‘night’ can have negative connotations, further highlighting the negative ways in which death can impact an individual. The metaphorical ‘inner weather’ of the mother implies how she had both happy days, while talking care of her son for example, and her days filled with grief and sorrow due to her loss. Thus, the poet explores loss through the narrator’s emotions and attitudes to their mother, but also through the mother’s own loss and how she dealt with it.*

In contrast, in*Material*the poet aligns the loss of the narrator’s mother and the significance of a handkerchief to the loss of a generation. The poem is written in short stanzas of 8 lines, mirroring a ballad perhaps to accentuate its story-like form, making it easier for the reader to keep pace with the narration of the speaker’s recollections. When the speaker’s mother was alive there was a different sort of generation where hankies were ‘waving out of trains’ and were used ‘mopping the corners of grief’, where this metaphor implies that they were used to wipe away tears. Hankies were also given as Christmas presents for example the narrator states that their ‘brother too, more often than not, got male ones: serious and grey, and lager, like they had more snot’. The simile here is used to create a lighthearted tone where the speaker can laugh before the poem shifts and we get the narrator’s perspective of her life after her mother died. The speaker recalls with nostalgia that with the loss of hankies, there occurred a loss of ‘headscarves, girdles, knitting wool/ and trouser presses’ alongside with the sense of community that existed amongst people such as ‘greengrocers’, ‘butchers’ and ‘fishmongers’. The generation when the speaker’s mother always had a hanky ‘up [their] sleeve’ is lost, replaced by ‘tissues and uncertainty’ and now, a reader may infer that the narrator feels guilty about not being able to be a stay home mum which is demonstrated in this quote: ‘there is never a hanky up my sleeve’ highlighting the fact that the speaker recognises that the sentimentality behind handkerchiefs, ‘their soft and hidden history’ is forever lost. The speaker also states that they turned on the TV to ‘buy some time to write this poem and eat bough biscuits I would bake’ A modern reader, particularly a 21st-century working mother is likely to feel sympathy and relate to the speaker as they can infer how they are torn and how they would like to replicate the style of mothering of her own mother. However, this also raises questions as to if modern parenting is turning lazy. Moreover, the poem has regular verses throughout, with the exception of the sixth stanza, which has nine lines instead of the usual eight and is also the only example of enjambment across stanzas. This briefly disturbs the poem's flow, making it more noticeable to the reader, and it also signals the poem's tonal shift, as the poem now has an air of sadness-tinged nostalgia as a result of the changes in attitudes that have arisen across society. It is also quite interesting to note how at the beginning of the poem, the speaker referred to handkerchiefs as a ‘hanky’ but at the end they refer it to as ‘handkerchiefs’ which a reader could argue shows that as a young girl, she found handkerchiefs irrelevant but now that she has grown and matured, she understands the meaning and recognises the significance of the loss of that generation. Hence, the poet explores loss by emphasising the value of handkerchiefs which is lost and died alongside their generation.