Comparing Billy Collins 'Poems The End And The Beginning'

What are the costs of war? Both the famous Polish poet, Szymborska, and the famous American poet, Billy Collins, addresses this question in their poems. Szymborska in her poem, “The End and the Beginning” talks about the physical expenses of war. Szymborska begins her poem with the lines, “After every war/someone has to clean up,” (lines 1 and 2). To support the expenses of war, she uses the lines, “We’ll need the bridges back,/and new railway stations,” (lines 22 and 23). Also, she writes, “Photogenic it’s not,/and takes years,”(lines 18 and 19). Finally, she says, “Someone has to drag in a girder/to prop up a wall,” (lines 14 and 15). Szymborska is trying to convey the message that war comes with a price, and everyone has to go through the physical effects of war. Szymborska was not the only poet who wrote about the costs of war. Billy Collins did as well, in his poem, “Building With its Face Blown Off.”

Billy Collins’s poem shows that war costs a person emotionally. After a war, people lose their sense of dignity and privacy. For example, he starts his poem with, “How suddenly the private/is revealed in a bombed-out city,” (lines 1 and …show more content…
Although both poems are about the effects of war, Szymborska focuses on the physical costs, and Collins focuses on the emotional costs. Also, Szymborska believes that the end of the war is the start of rebuilding. In contrast, Collins states that there is no beginning, middle, or end. The reason that they have different perspectives on war is because Szymborska experienced war firsthand, while Billy Collins only saw pictures of a war. When a picture is observed, nobody can tell if it’s the beginning, middle, or end. Let us return to the original question, “What are the costs of war?” As shown by Szymborska and Collins, there are many costs of war. There are physical costs, as well as emotional costs. Unfortunately, all wars come with a