Mid Term Break Poem Analysis

Both Mid Term Break by Seamus Heaney and Full Moon and Little Frieda by Ted Hughes are poignant poems that convey touching emotion and feelings. Mid Term Break is a poem that links the poet to a family tragedy, the death of his little brother. The poet chooses to describe the reaction of his parents and other relatives in a straightforward manner in order to convey the shocking impact of his brother’s death. In Full Moon and Little Frieda, the poet describes movingly and vividly his own excitement in observing his daughter 's joy and surprise at seeing a full moon suddenly coming into her view in a picturesque scene of the countryside. Some similar techniques like the use of imagery and metaphors but they also employ different techniques in presenting

In Full Moon and Little Frieda, Hughes uses lots of imagery and metaphors, for example, in the second stanza, “spider’s web, tense for the dew’s touch” personifies the tense expectation of the inanimate object - the spider’s web. In stanza 3, cows with “warm wreaths of breath” is a metaphor associated with death, as “wreaths” are flowers often seen in funerals, the poet has seemingly used alliteration to draw the reader’s attention as it does not have any accents and has a soft pronunciation . In Mid Term Break, even though Heaney uses similar techniques to illustrate his poem, the effects are quite different. In the first line, Heaney uses college “sick bay” to describe where he, it also acts as a metaphor to present a sense of isolation from his family. Another poetic device used is alliteration. Hughes uses “warm wreaths of breath”, “tense”, “touch”, “tempt” and “tremor” to intensify the sense of suspense. In Mid Term Break, Heaney uses alliteration in the last sentence - “four foot box, a foot for every year” to accentuate the shock at the end of the poem, which creates an ironic imagery of a heartbreaking