The Poem, Anyone Lived in a Pretty how Town by Cummings

Cummings’ poem, Everyone Lived in a Pretty How Town, raises concern of how people value relationships in urban areas. Cumming portrays contemporary relationships as fading, claiming that people no longer value others. Instead, they respect their own selves and only see their industries as essential, and they show no care for their neighbors’ well-being. “Women and men do not worry for anything” (Kennedy, 2016). Cumming also views the new world as lacking in love for one another. He claims that children are more interested in love when they are young, but lose interest when they get older. Likewise, Robert Browning’s My Last Duchess, focuses on personal relationships between men and women. Browning’s describe the relationship between a duke and Duchess. From his poem, it is evident that the significance of an individual in a relation ends if they no longer share same interest and objectives. The duke feels that his wife is too gullible since everyone can make her laugh and blush. Therefore, she becomes less important in his life to the extent that he decides to kill her by” shutting her smiles (Kennedy, 2016).” However, by keeping a piece of art that reminds him about her, it is evident that she was unique and significant in her own way. Thus showing that everyone was important in relationships despite disparities in objectives and personality

A major similarity about the two poems is that they focus on human relationships. Both poems depict that, people often find other significant or important of they have common objectives and goals. Cummings poem shows that urban life is characterized by individualism hence people are only concerned by their own personal objectives (Kennedy, 2016). Likewise, Brummings also shows that the trait of the Duke’s wife was not acceptable to the Duke. Hence, her importance declined and he found no reason to keep her anymore. This is due to the factor that she did not depict power to the community as intended by the Duke.

Nonetheless, a major difference between the two poems is that Cumming focuses on the social relations while Robert focuses on the individual to individual relationships. Cumming’s title anyone use to live in the pretty how town, reveals that the poet is interested in social relations in his small town. On the other hand, My last Duchess by Brummings, depicts the relationship between the Duke and Duchess.

From a personal objective, cumin provided a vivid description of the modern day society particularly people living in urban areas. The urban life is hectic and busy which have led to weak social relations since people are working hard to achieve their objectives and ambitions. Likewise, Brummings also make it evident that people tend to loose significance to each other if they do not share similar objectives and interest. This explains why the duke had to kill his wife since she could not aid him earn more political respect with her naïve nature.

Reference

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Kennedy, X. J. (2016). Literature: An introduction to fiction, poetry, drama, and writing, portable edition, mla ... update edition. Place of publication not identified: Longman.

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