Can human emotions be expressed better in poetry?

 Tom Ruben poetry collection

vs. T.S. Eliot and Carol Ann Duffy

by Neelam Shah

Discussion on the Similarities and differences of the poetry collection of works between Carol Ann Duffy, Tom Ruben and T.S. Eliot. 

Tom’s main aim objectives of poetry collection was to highlight the poems that are descriptive and well versed, depicting different varied themes that captures images signified through personification, symbolic and a metaphorical language based on human life experiences or memories, allowing a wide range of readers to identify with his ideas. 

The poems are based on subjects such as feelings, partnerships, families or seasonal poetry e.g. summer, winter, Christmas treats, Christmas party, weather poetry, building up memories, natural disasters, and earthquakes in Turkey. Hope and assurance, Greek plays, films. 

Heritage, loneliness, pandemic, architecture, meditation, galleries, tourism, street, heat wave, parks, tree tops, stars, face, avalanches, weapons. Walks in Westminster, crossing bridges, planet poetry such as twilight moon, sun, human maps- cartography, limits, crawling, trains, between darkness, transformation- changes. 

I have chosen TS Eliot and Carol Ann Duffy for comparing with Tom Ruben's work, as they have similar themes and verse structure and in the ideas about expressing the human emotions to readers in a descriptive way. 

From the article, I would like readers to feel the same compelling deep thinking, I found when reading Tom's work and watch it unfold in its connection to my own life experiences.

The two comparative twentieth century writers I have chosen, T.S. Eliot and Carol Ann Duffy have written similar free verse descriptive poetry with metaphorical and colloquial language in their poem collections. They too express ideas metaphorically and personifying languages, using a similar writing format, structure with attention to details to each stanza.

Carol Ann Duffy, is a feminist and the current laureate poet of the UK, she has played a great role in contemporary English literature and known for her outspoken voice. Her collections acts as an arena for formerly voiceless woman who have been marginalised to a subservient role under the guise of men and repudiated their own story and their own voice.

'Prayer'. One of Carol Ann Duffy's most popular and frequently discussed poems, 'Prayer' is a Shakespearean sonnet about the various reminders of prayer – heard in the rhythm of a train, or the sound of piano scales, or the familiar routine of the radio shipping forecast – which we experience in our daily lives.

T.S Eliot is also regarded as such an important writer because he captured the feelings and attitudes of the early twentieth century societies, in a unique, authentic way.

Eliot's work; The Waste Land expresses his disenchantment and disgust about the period after World War, in a series of vignettes, loosely linked by the legend of the search for the Grail, it portrays a sterile world of panicky fears and barren lusts, and of human beings waiting for some sign or promise of redemption.

Tom Ruben’s poetry has also the same authenticity which relates current era and societal happenings; in the way he has captured feelings and experiences of human life similar to Eliot and Carol Ann Duffy, as the poetry collection affects people and cultures as well in different colloquial senses and written in different metaphorical terms and the concepts are expressed in different ways in the way the poets each discuss humanity’s experiences in different perspectives with the use of different poetical language.

Written in colloquial terms different to how Tom Ruben writes in using different writing techniques and styles, Carol Ann Duffy’s poetry has written long monologue poems where as Tom Ruben has written his poetry in small free verses with extreme descriptive strong attention to details in metaphorical and personifying the poem to make the poem seems engaging and compelling to readers. Eliot has also been seen as a poet to capture feelings and attitudes of people in the twentieth century in a authentic way different to how Tom Ruben has captured as he writes in sonnet form most of the time and demonstrates a different style of writing in free verse compared to Ruben.

The similarity between all poetry collection of works is they all relate to people’s experiences, humanity, lives and feelings focusing on different themes  however all poetry collections by three authors are structured and represented,  formatted and written in different styles and relayed in shorter and longer verses. They each signify different descriptive analysis depicting each subject/theme of poem within deeper contexts differently and as well as expressed with different conceptual ideas to the readers therefore capturing different images/subliminal meanings/messages of subject of the poems to all readers minds with different perspectives and interpretations of the ideas within all poetry collections.

For example Prayer by Carol Ann Duffy is different to hope to assurance as prayer is more Shakespearean religious rhymes in daily lives and is written in colloquial terms compared to hope to assurance by Tom Ruben’s in his collection of poetry book 2.

Second book in the series:

MEMORY MININGS, AND OTHER PROBINGS 

By Tom Rubens

Memory Mining’s and other Probing by describing and analysing the poem hope in regards to human experiences of feelings of overcoming hardships and obstacles in seeing positivism and assurance of light at end of tunnel. 

Overall all three poets and their poetry/poetry collections are different in the way they write poetry to grab reader’s attention in a engaging compelling way to capture the readers images of mixed range of perspectives and interpretations of imagination, through all varied range of subjects/themes. The poetry by all three poets explored in humanity and people’s experiences in different styles of writing, stanzas and verses as well as poetical language in use of highly descriptive adjectives in reference to strong attention to detail used to illustrate the poems via use of varied ranges of poetical styles of terminology to communicate to readers i.e. use of colloquial, metaphorical and personifying language for depicting subliminal symbolic messages in the poems and signifying deeper meanings in contextual poetry in this twentieth century to appeal and to connect to all readers of all ages that relates to this particular types of poetry.

References:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3842364