Comparing Education for Leisure and Miracle on St. David’s Day :: Carol Ann Duffy Gillian Clarke Poems Essays

Comparing Education for Leisure and Miracle on St. David’s Day This essay will explore the similarities and differences between the two poems ‘Education for leisure’ which was written by Carol Ann Duffy and ‘Miracle on St. David’s Day’ by Gillian Clarke. The theme focused on the poems is ‘outsider’. In ‘Education for Leisure’ the man is an outsider because he is being ignored, however in ‘miracle on St. David’s Day’, the patient is well taken care of but is an outsider in his mind because he is sick and cannot speak. He wants to be an outsider so that no one can notice him. Firstly, the poem ‘Education for leisure’ creates a negative atmosphere caused by the treacherous outsider. Every stanza concludes with a full stop. The poem has five verses overall. Duffy has written this poem in the style of a diary, rather than constructing the words to rhyme. This is shown by the word ‘I’. She has also used metaphors to express the circumstances ‘†¦boredom stirring in the streets.’ This phrase shows that the day is awfully uninspired and no one is in prospect. This day is like any other day for the man because his life is filled with sadness. He feels uninspired and may feel frustrated due to the ‘boredom’. He wants to destroy something, ‘I am going to kill something.’ This phrase is directly alerting the reader that the man is unstable and is enthusiastic to kill. He is too weak and defenceless to kill a living thing so he mentions of victimising an object. It also indicates that the poem is occurring in the present tense. Duffy has used this to add to the tension in the mind of the speaker. The self-centeredness of the speaker appears in the repeated use of "I", "me", "my". ‘I have had enough of being ignored†¦Ã¢â‚¬â„¢ this shows that the people around him do not take enough consideration towards him, therefore he feels insecure and abandoned. He has no one to express what he is feeling because he feels isolated. Duffy creates an image of a lonely, desperate man that desires to be heard so the reader’s emotions would be pitiful. The writer wants the reader’s emotions to be sympathetic towards the character. The speaker has no idea what he is saying so he constantly changes the subject this is referred to by the quote: ‘We did that at school. Shakespeare. It was in another language and now the fly is in another’ this quote does not make sense due to the fact that the speaker keeps changing the topic he is talking about.