Comparing Black Swan Green And Letters To A Young Poet

The texts Black Swan Green by David Mitchell and Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke have similar central ideas. The main characters that they are learning to express the beauty of a poem, while finding themselves. In Black Swan Green the main character Jason has a speaking disability and he escapes Hangman (his speaking disability) by writing poems. Jason writes beautiful work, but doesn’t uses word as an enhancement. He uses them as the main part of his poems, but hides behind pseudonym. In Letters to a Young Poet the young poet is asking some guidance from a master poet. The master poet agrees to help the young poet, but wants the young poet to learn about himself in order to become a better poet. Both of the characters from …show more content…
The young poet wants some criticism from the master poet about his poetry. But the master wants the young poet to know that criticism is foreign concept to him.”Any attempt at criticism would be foreign to me” (Rilke, 5).The master poet says that the young poet's work is good, but they have no style of their own. They have a common style of writing like other poets. “I just tell you that your verses have no style of their own” (Rilke, 5). Their verse melody is so common that the word beauty is becomes no longer special. The young poet has trouble expressing his own identity. His work has no individual style; it’s beauty can’t be trifled other’s poetry. The master was pleased with his work “My Soul” because it has something different than all of his other poems. This piece of work has its own melody and beauty that catches the master poet’s attention. The master poet know that the young poet sends his work to magazine and compares his work to other’s work to see what he can do to make his work better. The master urges that he shouldn’t do this because he can’t create his own style. “You compare them with others poems and you are upset when certain editors reject your work. Now I beg you to stop doing that sort of stuff. You are looking outside and that is what you should be avoiding right now” (Rilke, 5) .The master want that young poet to look within himself and truly …show more content…
They show that in Letters to a Young Poet that the young poet has trouble expressing the true beauty of his work’s potential. While in Black Swan Green Jason has trouble expressing his poetry just by using beautiful word. It is unbalanced with common words and the beautiful word. They both are poets that are trying to become into better or even master poets but have forgotten to show their work in its true form. Instead they show a refined form of their poetry that is not a style of their own. “I just tell you that your verse have no style of their own” (Rilke, 5). “Beautiful words ruin your poetry” (Mitchell, 147). Jason and the Young Poet have learned that in order become better poets they have to take the advice that they have learned to become a better poet. They also lack showing their poem’s beauty in most natural way. They also share another common problem they don’t show themselves within their work. They have a touch of falseness to their work. The Young Poet tweaks his work in order to satisfy other’s requirements. “You compare them with others poems and you are upset when certain editors reject your work. Now I beg you to stop doing that sort of things. You are