Comparing Tears In Sleep And Shoeing The Currach

Both “Tears in Sleep” by Louise Bogan and “Shoeing the Currach” by Mary O’Malley are short, but intense poems. “Tears in Sleep” is one stanza that is composed of nine lines. “Shoeing the Currach” is three stanzas. The first stanza is five lines, the second stanza is five lines, and the third stanza is three lines; therefore, there are 13 lines total. While “Tears in Sleep” is about the main character crying in their sleep and feeling sadness while being alone at night, Shoeing the Currach is about a woman who becomes broken hearted after a man destroys her. While both poems are focused on different subjects, the themes of both of these literary pieces eminate sadness. The second line of “Tears in Sleep” states “And I, in the cage of sleep, on a stranger’s breast,” (2) immediately shows sadness. The use of the word cage was done in order to show that the person the poem is about is feeling trapped in their sleep. The second part about sleeping on a strangers breast was to show an unfamiliarness and lonlieness. The feelings of being lonely and trapped are used together in this line in order to show the theme of sadness because feeling either trapped, lonely, or both are feelings that most people do not find pleasant and can often be upsetting.
“She’d spin into his hands/And lightly he’d lift and turn her” (4-5) combined with the lines “That’s how it was with them/ Until the balance shifted” (6-7) gives the reader the idea that the poem is about two beings who are extremely close. Because people typically keep their personal space, the woman spinning into the man’s hands while he lifted her off the ground shows that there was both a physical and emotional relationship between them. However, when the poem begins to talk about the balance shifting, the reader can feel a sense that something went wrong with the relationship between the two subjects of the