“Salmon” by Tom Dawe and “Pike” by Ted Hughes are two free verse poems that both have the theme of fish. In their poems both of the poets use strong imagery to describe the two different fish and both poems also have the motif of someone watching a fish. The final element that stands out in both poems is the use of structure and the way that they are different. Although both poems are similar with some of the elements they differ in ways, like how the two poets describe the fishes in their own unique way and the different levels of simplicity in there writings where one is much more complex than the other.
The imagery in “Salmon” isn't as strong as in “Pike” but Dawe does a great job of making the salmon seem like an ancient mythical creature. In the first stanza Dawe describes the salmon as "wise prophetic creature" (line 4), "enteral battler" (line 6), and "her flesh forbidden" (line 9). This gives the reader the image of a smart old creature that hides its flesh with its battle armor. Imagery is also used in the second stanza of this poem. In the second stanza Dawe describes the scenery of the poem when he wrote "This morning in low, rusty water, / she was spotted" (lines 12-13). These lines give the mental image of someone looking into the rust colored murky water and spotting the fish as it swam by.
In “Pike”, Hughes likes to use colors and measurements to describe what the pike looks like and the scenery. In the first line Hughes writes "Pike, three inches long, perfect"(line 1). Already the reader has a rough image of what the fish looks like. In the second stanza he writes, "A hundred feet long in their world"(line 7), this lets the reader visualize that the pike is the biggest fish in the water. In stanza 3 Hughes desc...
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...a he lines up a few lines in a row (3 in the first, 4 in the second, and 5 in the third and final stanza.) Dawe also ends every stanza with a period.
Hughes poem has a much neater structure to it. Every line is aligned on the left side of the poem and each line starts with a capital. Unlike Dawe Hughes uses end-stop lines through this poem and does not put a period at the end of every stanza.
In conclusion both of these poems are very interesting and well made, but although they are very similar the biggest differences between the two are the structure and the detail they go into while describing the fish. Hughes poem is much more detailed when describing the pike but Dawe uses the structure of the poem to help the imagery of the poem.
Works Cited
http://www.heritage.nf.ca/arts/tomdawe.html
http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=7079
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