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Compare and Contrast Follower&Those Winter Sundays

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Compare and Contrast Follower&Those Winter Sundays
TANYA MOONEY

COMPARE AND CONTRAST FOLLOWER & THOSE WINTER SUNDAYS

SEAMUS HEANEY
Was born in April 1939, the eldest of nine children. His father owned and worked on a farm of 50 acres in co Derry. His mother came from a family called McCann, she was a very out spoken woman, whilst his father sparing of talk, Heaney believes the difference in temperament led to a 'quarrel with himself', from which his peotry arises.
At the age of 11, Heaney won a scholarship to St Columb's college, a boarding school in Derry City, 40 miles from home. Heaney went on to become a lecture at queens university and in 1970/71, as a result to a trip to Berkeley in the US , Heaney resigned to write full time. Since 1982 Heaney taught for one semester per year at Harvard and, in 1989 elected professor of poetry at Oxford university, a post which required that he deliver 3 public lectures per year.

Robert Hayden
Was born in 1913, the year in which Rosa parks arrived in the world. Robert was the son of Ruth and Asa Sheffeys, who separated soon after the birth of their son, and he was raised by foster parents Sue Ellen Westerfield and her husband, William Hayden, who lived in Detroit ghetto which was nicknamed, 'Paradise Valley'. Robert Hayden graduated in 1936. Hayden then after his masters degree, taught for several years a the University of Michigan, where he became professor of English. Hayden once said that he considered himself to be a, 'poet who teachers in order to earn a living so that he can write a poem or two now and then'.

INTRODUCTION

The poems “Follower”, by Seamus Heaney and “Those Winter Sundays”, by Robert Hayden, although similar in some respects, differ in tone, structure, rhyme and rhythem.

STRUCTURE

The structure of both poems are very different. “Those Winter Sundays” consists of 3 stanzas of differing lengths. In contrast Seamus Heaney's “Follower” is made up of of six stanzas of equal length.“Follower” has a regular ABAB rhyme

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