Long Distance Poem

‘Heidi’ and ‘Long Distance’ are two disparate poems in terms of tone and elucidation, ‘Heidi’ is a blithe narrative about the coming of age of a young women who battles for what she believes in despite losing a parent, and ‘Long Distance’ faces the issue of never moving forwards.

From the poem ‘Heidi’, we can also see Heidi’s determination in achieving what she wants, as she is inexorable ‘tell them it won’t wash out-not even if I wanted to try’, this shows Heidi’s headstrong determination, creating a clear image of her personality for the reader, even inducing a sense of admiration for her. The poet constructs a sense of personal relationship with Heidi and the reader by manipulating pronouns such as ‘you’, as a way of enabling the reader

Heidi is obviously grown up, and has burgeoned her own perception and disposition. The phrase ‘although dyed hair was not specifically forbidden, yours was, apart from anything else, not done in the school colors’, shows the headmistress is unaccustomed to students dyeing their hair ‘blue’. There is an element of hilarity because of the idiosyncratic concept of blue hair. The language is colloquial, also reinforcing the idea of rebellion, and the brackets in the first stanza reflects on the informality of the tone. On the contrary, in ‘Long Distance’, the poem follows a rhyme scheme of ABAB in the first three stanzas and an ABBA rhyme scheme in the last stanza, succeeding the contour of an

The poem starts in a reminiscent tone portrayed through the language and phrase ‘though my mother was already two years dead’. The second line continues the mood with ‘Dad kept her slippers warming by the gas’. In the second stanza, Harrison personally addresses the reader with ‘you’, similar to ‘Heidi’ to again, connect emotionally with the reader and to present his own recollections of how his father would act out a charade ‘he’d put you off an hour to give him time to clear away her things and look alone’ and despite this seeming absurd in a level and his slight unease, ‘my blight of disbelief’, the poet has a great sympathy for his father’s suffering, ‘as though his raw love were such a