Sunday, April 28, 2019

For my Romeo and Juliet project I need a poem relating to the theme of "parents and children." What are some poems from notable poets I can use?

Great question! The first poem that comes to mind for me is Philip Larkin's "This Be The Verse," which is an extremely well-known poem about the relationship between parents and children. This poem takes the cynical view that parents "fill you with the faults they had / and add some extra, just for you." This can be related to Romeo and Juliet in that the parents in the play are passing on their own difficulties to their children, who must now cope with inherited tension. The parents in Larkin's poem, too, have inherited their problems in their turn. We can relate this to the ongoing feud between the Capulets and the Montagues, which affects the lives of Romeo and Juliet through no fault of their own.
There's also Stephen Spender's "My Parents." In this poem, the speaker's parents seek to protect him "from children who were rough." They impose their own view of the world upon their child, out of a desire to protect him, and ultimately the child is created in the image of its parents. The problem is that this makes it difficult for the child to fit in with those whom the parents have deemed inadmissible to their social circles, again something we could relate to this play.

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