Compare and Contrast Piano and Poem at Thirty-nine Alice Walkers Poem at Thirty-Nine and D.H.

Lawrences Piano are both about nostalgic remembrance and childhood recollections. Lawrences Piano highlights the personas poignancy when thinking of his mother and his happy childhood days and brings out strong feelings of pathos and nostalgia whereas Walkers Poem at Thirty-Nine focuses more on the persona reflecting upon her own life and childhood and feeling a sense of happiness in grief as she realizes how much her father has taught her about life. Both poems convey wistful longing for the past and evoke sadness and may make readers think about their relationship with their parents. Piano and Poem at Thirty-Nine takes a slightly different approach on the theme remembrance. Lawrences Piano is more negative and emotional. He uses very strong and emotive language to convey a sense of nostalgia and sentimentality which is shown in his choice of strong diction like heart and weep. The persona wants to return to the warmth and comfort of his childhood days so much that his heart weeps to belong there and a metaphor is used to compare remembrance with a flood to show that the personas tears, emotions and memories are flowing. The mood of the poem is sad and nostalgic. The second poem Poem at Thirty-nine however has a relatively positive tone. Though the persona is very sad about losing his father, which is shown in the exclamation how I miss my father repeated twice in the poem, her theme of remembrance shows her memories of the love and teachings from her father and she is consoled that her father will admire the woman she becomes as she starts to see her fathers positive qualities in herself. There is obviously a bright tone in when the persona says now I look and cook just like him. The similarity of the persona and her father make readers feel their strong bonding and love. The attitude of the poem is celebrating her fathers existence and her identity. The structures of the poems serve to show the feelings and attitudes of the personas. In Piano, the uniform structure of quatrains in three stanzas and the use of dactyls and sometimes spondees could represent security of childhood as well as musical structure. Enjambment makes the memories flow more rapidly, showing that he cannot control his tears and emotion and the use of present tense makes memory seem more immediate. In contrast Poem at Thirty-nine is written in free verse as her tone is more conversational. It allows her to express her flow of thoughts freely. Same as Piano, Present tense are also used to show that she is thinking about the past at the moment and both the enjambment in the two poems can show the

spontaneous flow of thoughts. Both poems demonstrate the idea of feminist through the use of juxtaposition. In Poem at thirty nine, the juxtaposition of woman and chopping wood, show that the persona mirrored her fathers manly qualities and she is proud of it as she thinks that she has strength and is independent. On the other hand, the juxtaposition of manhood and weed in Piano shows that the persona is emotional which should is not expected to be an attribute of man. He is not proud of it like the persona in Poem at Thirty-nine and feel shameful as if hismanhood is cast down.