Essay on Watching Tennis and A Subaltern’s Love Song

Watching Tennis and A Subaltern’s Love Song Introduction The themes and ideas are so similar that if one was to briefly explain what both poems were about, you would think that they were exactly the same poems. Yet what really separates these two poems is their technical side. Form The form of a poem can be mainly observed by looking at and listening to the poem. Rhyme scheme, verse length, and line length are but a few examples of a poem’s form. A Subaltern’s Love song is a relatively long poem compared to Watching Tennis. It contains eleven verses, each of four lines length. There are between ten and thirteen syllables in each line. As this poem tells us a story and has a regular rhyme scheme, it is a narrative and†¦show more content†¦It has a steady rhythm in the first two verses as he thinks about the woman and gives us his thoughts. This smooth rhythm gives a sense of harmony as he describes the woman and her grace. As the verse length and rhyme scheme change, it adds an element of loss of control. This is because the man is making love to the woman and the change in form results in an unorthodox sounding poem. This helps visualize the man’s nothing-to-lose attitude for love. Another way Betjeman emphasises the fact that the man constantly thinks of this woman is how he starts the poem with â€Å"Miss J. Hunter Dunn, Miss J. Hunter Dunn† and ends the poem with â€Å"†¦Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.† We can see that not only has he started and ended with the same name, to emphasise his love, but he also makes a slight change. â€Å"Miss J. Hunter-Dunn† is mentioned at the start of the poem and â€Å"Miss Joan Hunter-Dunn† at the end. The difference is that he changes the J to Joan. This emphasises how he has become familiar with her as he is now engaged. He is, in a sense, emphasising his happiness and smugness on getting engaged with her by deliberately changing her name. He includes two words next to each other which sound very similar, although one is an adjective and the other is a noun. â€Å"Carefullest carelessness.† These juxtaposed words create the image of delicacy. This same idea is not used in