Compare and contrast at least three of Fanthorpe’s poems Essay

Four of Fanthorpe’s poems, Dear Mr. Lee, You’ll Be Hearing From Us Shortly, Half Past Two and Not My Best Side all have things in common yet on different subjects. In her poems, Fanthorpe challenges our views particularly on stereotypes and prejudices both traditional and modern. The serious point of Dear Mr. Lee is to get across that looking at writing, so intensely can ruin the original idea the writer had. Some pieces of writing should just be read and enjoyed. Fanthorpe as a teacher often has to take apart pieces of work and analyse them yet she seems in this poem to disagree with the over analysing of writing. Also similar in all four of these poems is the structure. All are written as prose, the most obvious prose like poem is Dear Mr. Lee. It seems to be written as a letter by a student who has read Mr. Lee’s book. Yet looking further into the poem the reader discovers that it is actually written as the thoughts of the student. The way the student talks about and criticises the teacher. â€Å"Mr. Smart is my least favourite person† and â€Å"Mr. Smart has to explain why they’re jokes†¦Ã¢â‚¬  are good examples of thoughts. Dear Mr. Lee’s lines end randomly, which is odd for a poem, rhythm and pattern are not present and generally the poem has no traditional poetry techniques such as alliteration, onomatopoeia and rhyme. Also not all the lines begin with capital letters, which is very strange for a poem. â€Å"I wanted to say Dear Laurie (sorry) your book’s the one that made up for the other,†¦Ã¢â‚¬  The poem seems to be unplanned and has no apparent structure, using random line lengths, and also it seems to be this way because of the line beginning without capitals, which makes it, look messy and unplanned. Dear Mr. Lee is trying to get across a point that criticises the studying of writing whereas Not My Best Side challenges the use of stereotypes both traditional and modern. St George is a critic reading the poem making his objections to it, complaining about the way the new characters differ from the traditional or stereotypes. â€Å"Don’t you want to carry out the roles that sociology and myth have designed for you?† Not My Best Side is more tongue and cheek than Dear Mr. Lee in the way it makes fun of the stereotypes. In many stories involving dragons, the dragon is often fierce and often the bad guy. Fanthorpe has made fun of this and made the dragon totally the opposite: vain, proud, patronising and feels he is superior. He is a prima donna. The woman is not beautiful, helpless and grateful to the hero. She is self-centred, and a gold-digger. Then there is St. George who is supposed to be brave, handsome and modest. Fanthorpe’s St. George is a modern day man with a huge ego. Not My Best Side also appears to be written as prose. Also it lacks traditional poetry techniques, as does Dear Mr. Lee. The lines seem to end randomly, and yet again there is also the use of brackets as afterthoughts, which are found, for the same reason in Dear Mr. Lee. Unlike Not My Best Side, Half Past Two may be written from a personal experience. From her experiences Fanthorpe tries to get across that there are different kinds of time. Fanthorpe uses the child to represent the first kind of time: Events that the child remembers or has picked up. The child does not know ‘adult’ time and so uses events in the day as time. For example: â€Å"Gettinguptime†, and â€Å"Timeyouwereofftime†. The second time portrayed is real time. This type of time is the day divided up by the clock in hours and minutes. The third of time is suspended time. This is the type of time the child is in when he ‘daydreams’ and drifts off into his own world. As he doesn’t understand the adult time he goes into his own suspended time to escape. In Not My Best Side, Fanthorpe introduces three voices that divide the poem and show the reader who is speaking. This also appears in Half Past Two. There is the narrator, the teacher and the child. These three voices appear randomly within the stanzas whereas the three voices in Not My Best Side are used to divide the poem into stanzas. Like Dear Mr. Lee and Not My Best Side, Half Past Two is also written as prose. The randomly ending lines and use of brackets, also used in both Dear Mr. Lee and Not My Best Side emphasise the writing as prose. The brackets in Half Past Two represent afterthoughts, similar to Dear Mr. Lee and Not My Best Side. All of Fanthorpe’s poems seem to involve thoughts of someone, concerned about all that occurs in their own head. Maybe this person is Fanthorpe herself. Therefore the poems would be written about self-experiences. For example, the views of the Dragon, Princess, Knight, the suspended time of the child and the thoughts of the interviewee could all be taken as Fanthorpe’s own thoughts. Fanthorpe’s poems are idiosyncratic, all have a lose structure, the line endings are odd and stanza lengths are also all different. Her poetry is written mainly as prose and is easy to tell why, the use of brackets mid line to represent after thoughts and different length structure makes the poems look like prose writing. This is typical of Fanthorpe’s writing and hence her poems being similar in all ways.