Comparing Two Poems Essay, Research Paper

Topic: compare and contrast the two poems.

The two poems Package for the Distant Future and The Song of the Whale differs mainly in their subject matter and the way they evoke different feelings and images and also the style and presentation of the poem. Coincidently both poems contain the themes of death and caring for the environment, which the writers feel strongly about.

The poem Package of the Distant Future tells the story of a person who finds a time capsule from a previous civilisation. The capsule tells a brief history of the people before his or her civilisation came into existence. This poem differs greatly in the subject matter to the subject of The Song of the Whale. This poem discusses the cruelty and death of whales in the present time.

Whale, I hear you

Grieving.

Great whale, crying for your life

The quote ‘Whale I hear you grieving’ creates and image in the reader the whales are suffering and dying due to the cruelty of mankind. Thus, one might say that both of these poems differ due to their subject matter.

Both poems are written in a serous nature but evoke different emotions from the readers. The poem about whales evokes sad and compassionate feelings from the readers.

Great whale, crying for your life

Crying for your kind

The poem Package for the Distant Future produces images of desperation new generations and the history and evolution of old civilisation being held on a scrap of paper.

We had a lot of things we did not like

And could have lived without

Do not invent gods

I hope the earth is nearly clean again.

This image could be seen to be rather disturbing, so to can the pictures produced by The Song of the Whale, which depict image of cruelty, sadness and the absolute ignorance of society towards topics such as this. The two poems obviously speak different theme but the writers still managed to evoke the same feelings of sadness and compassion into the readers.

The repetition of the line “Whale I heard you,” shows that the writer, Kit Wright, not only understands the sadness of the whales but also is frustrated because there is nothing which she can do to prevent further harm to these creatures. This sentence stood out of the poem because it was repeated several times and also because it contained a greater sense of power to it than the rest of the poem because of it’s repetition. This poem differs from Sylvia Kantaris’s Package for the Distant Future because there is no repetition in words or sentences, but it still manages to give us a strong and clear message. The setting out of these two poems differs in several ways. The Song of the Whale is set out stanzas while Package for the Distant Future is in a free verse form. Therefore, we can see that the two poems have a totally different style and presentation.

The two poems are similar, however, in the way that they both produce a sense of death. The older generation in Package of the Distant Future no longer exist and that the new generation must be told about the past, how death is just a beginning of a new generation. Similarly The Song of the Whale concentration of death revolves around man’s influence over others. In Package for the Distant Future and The Song of the Whale both of the writers seem to understand and care for nature as indicated by the subjects of the poem, but cannot directly alter what is happening, they can only express their feelings and worries through poetry. And hope to tell others how to understand and help the environment. Thus, the two poems contain the same theme but have different of expressing it.

The two poems, Package for the Distant Future and The Song of the Whale are basically two different poems with two different themes, but still able to give the readers the same emotions on the topic of death. They are written in a different style but are still manage to express the same feelings and maintain a clear picture of the topics of the poems.