The complex emotions and situations which one experiences in a lifetime are difficult to summarize in words at all, let alone in the short space that poetry proffers. However, as Anthony Thwaite and Alistair Elliot prove in their respective poems, "So Easy, So Hard," and "The Work of Our Hands," it is certainly a feat that can be accomplished with a fine attention to detail and nuance. In "So Easy, So Hard," it seems that Thwaite is able to summarize the entire human condition in the short space of eight lines. Through his excellent use of extended metaphor, rhyme and meter, tactile and visual imagery, alliteration and positive and negative word connotation, Thwaite is able to convey to the audience both the simplicity and the difficulty in living. Similarly, Alistair Elliot takes on the themes of love and art, using a first person point of view to directly address his audience. He employs poetic devices such as extended metaphor, simile, and rhyme, in order to express his own notion that art, like love, only grows greater over the passage of time.
"So much is so easy," Thwaite's poem begins. The poet immediately establishes an omniscient narrative voice that stands outside the poem. Rather than using a first person narration, or direct address, as Elliot does with the opening line: "Your needlework is wonderful," Thwaite introduces his poem as a more generalized philosophical argument. Interestingly, however, Elliot is also to achieve a general philosophy through his relation of intimate detail, where Thwaite's poem relies on a beautifully crafted extended metaphor to achieve the same end. The extended metaphor in Elliots "The Work of Our Hands," is much more complex, and interwoven into the poem, rather than comprising it. Elliot first creates a simile between his writing, and his wife's textile work: "My verse is like your patchwork," he equates the two as forms of art. The symbolism however, is in the details. The art, he expla...