Comparing Apology To My Father

The two poems Apology to My Father by David Hutchison, and On the Birth of a Son by David Campbell, are very different at first glance. On closer examination of the similarities and differences of: audience, language, themes, messages, structure and readers role, connections can be made. Readers are rewarded by carefully reading these poems.

A man thinking about one specific event in his life and the regret he has always felt about that night, is the poem Apology to My Father. Back when the male, whos point of view the poems from, was a teenage boy, his father had just come back from war deathly wounded. They are sitting by the fireplace listening to a storm, almost falling asleep, the father tells the son to go to bed and as hes leaving the room, the son goes to kiss his father on the forehead, but hesitates. This hurts his father and the son leans down, but only giving a half-hearted kiss. In the morning his father is dead and that is the regret that will follow the son for the rest of his life. On the Birth of a Son however, is about a father fearing fatherhood and if the child will get along with him, be nice and whether he will be good at fatherhood or a failure, but then he sees his son and
Although one is easier to decipher than the other, they both require work to get to the roots of the true meaning of the poem, which someone who is just learning their letters, or only reads and doesnt really think about what it is theyre reading, would definitely be thinking Im seeing a poem but I have no idea whats happening. This is all due to the sophistication of the language used to write these poems, for example; Theres an espaliered pear from On the Birth of a Son, and was the noise of guns battering besieged Tobruk. For the average person, these to short parts of sentences would result in a tedious search through the dictionary and/or