Relationships between Parents and Children are described

The three poems all contain different ideas on relationships between parents and children. In before you were mine, the author writes about how someone imagines their mother, and her life, before they were born.

Mother..any distance tells of a son's changing relationship with his mother, and what has happened as he has grown older. On my first Sonne is elegiac, it tells a fathers story of his son's death, and the emotions which he has felt.The two poems, Before you were mine and Mother..

any distance use imagery; On my first Sonne does not. Carol Ann Duffy uses imagery freely in Before you were mine describing the mother, 'The three of you bend from the waist, hoolding each other, or your knees, and shriek at the pavement.' The author gives a different image in each stanza, each containing her mother, as well as others, different in each paragraph. In the first stanza she includes her mother, her mother's friends, and boyfriends.

In the second she goes on to describe the mothers red shoes, how they are now relics to her child. In the last stanza it is explained how, even when she was a child, she wanted her mother to be a friend, 'Even then I wanted the bold girl winking in Portobello, somewhere in Scotland, before I was born.'The poem Mother..any distance uses imagery metaphorically. The ways a mother helps her child is described, explaining how she helped her child when growing up, with small distances first; 'Windows, pelmets, doors,' -This symbolizes how she helped her child when they were young, with small problems.

As the child grows, so do the distances. He is further away, the emotional gap has grown, and he only occasionally reports back to her, '...reporting meters, centimeters back to base.

' The mother is 'base' where he starts off. 'You at the zero end, me with the spool of tape,' The tape represents the emotional distance between them, as he grows.Mother ..any distance has quite a simple structure.

It begins by telling how a mother helps with small things; as the poem progresses, the child goes onto greater distances, and heights, until finally they are reaching out, needing to leave. To be a success, or to fail. The author shows how the child has grown up, and grown away from his mother. Starting small, and ending up at the very top peak of the house, and the end of his childhood. The increasing size of measurements is used to represent the growing distance between mother and son. Without this structure the poem lacks meaning, and the reader would struggle to understand its messageOn my first Sonne does not follow any particular structure.

It is not repetetive, as the other two are. It is a short, precise and effective poem, although words are few, those used are very powerful, as well as the phrases. Half way through the poem, the author uses a paradox,'O, could I loose all father now, for whyWill man lament the state he should envy?'-This draws the reader further into the poem as well as making them think.The author uses some words which are no longer commonly used - such as 'tho' for 'you'. The author uses iambic pentameters.

A complex idea is packed neatly into the last two rhyming lines of the poem, an epigram.The poet sees his sons death as the result oh his sin - loving the child too much, this idea returns at the end of the poem. Johnson also sees his sons life as a loan, which he has had to repay after seven years. The use of this extended metaphor expresses the idea that people all really belong to God and are only permitted to spend time in this world.

Ben Jonson, in some places writes as if he was talking to him son, it seems as though he assumes that the boy can read his words. He calls his son the child of his 'right hand' these ideas suggest the boy is of great worth and also that he would have been as his father, the writer's heir. An image which comes from the Bible. It reflects ancient cultures, how Jesus is shown as sitting at God's right hand.

Before you were mine describes, in each stanza a little more of the image of the mother, each stanza is different, and this is effective, as each has it's own little story, and image. The author also reminds you in each paragraph, that the mothers child is not yet born, and it is only their imagination. The poem flows well, and she uses the title as the last phrase of the poem, 'Where you sparlkle and waltz and laugh before you were mine' - this is a very effective ending, and completes the poem well.