Imitations - Abse

Imitations is a poem by Abse about a mother and her son. We come across an immediate link with Larkin through the quote 'my son and I' this links to Dockery and Son through the fact that the poem is about a father and his son. 'snowflakes whitewash the shed roof and the grass' represents something that is fresh, pure and clean. Maybe this is a metaphor used by Abse to represent a good and genuine relationship between the mother and the son. This idea of freshness or new life is further reinforced through the word 'April' which is Spring. It is clearly the mother's name so this could suggest something about her overall personality. It is interesting that she describes her son as a 'chameleon'. Chameleons are a species of lizard that change colour to adapt to the background. This could be a metaphor for her sons emotions as he is '16' so he is in his teenage years. We also get further comments about the son through the quote 'my soft diamond'. Diamonds are the hardest stones, so the mother could be saying that her son is hard on the outside but soft on the inside. He is also described as a 'deciduous evergreen' in this stanza. 'Deciduous' means the falling of maturity or the dropping of a part that is no longer needed. However, an evergreen tree withholds all of its leaves for all four seasons. This could be a metaphor used by Abse that the boy is withholding all of the important things in life from his mum, but he's also losing his youth the older he gets. He is letting go of the unimportant things in life, like a deciduous tree and becoming a mature adult, like an evergreen.

In stanza two we get the reference to 'music' and we automatically link this to the poem by Larkin Broadcast. The mum comments 'how hard it is to know' conveying the view that she doesn't know his music taste further reinforcing that the two maybe drifting apart from one another as the boy is in his teenage years. She also comments that 'dreams of some school Juliet I don't know'. This again reinforces that he's a teenage boy; he doesn't discuss his personal life with his mother. However she describes 'despite a sky half blue, a blur of white blossom'. The fact that it is 'half blue' and 'a blur' could suggest the mother's uncertain feelings towards her son. Maybe she doesn't want him to mature and grow up from her safe grasp.

The use of the word 'cool' in the last stanza comes across as very colloquial, like modern day language. The mother comments about 'my father alive again' which suggests she is thinking back to when she was her son's age. A memory of when her father was alive, them both being together. It also represents the view that her father's no longer around. We also get the symbolism of the 'white butterflies'. The white butterflies symbolises the soul of the departed ones. They could be the spirit animal of her father, so some religious imagery is conveyed to us through this poem. It's also described 'as if by elastic'. This suggests that this is a bond that will never break, even though she has lost her father this bond will never break. The poem ends with the word 'pass' conveying the view that the mother is out of her daydream and she is back to reality with her son. The mother may wish to live in a dream world where she will be with her father once again, reinforcing he was an important figure to her in her life.

We also get rhyming words in this poem. For example in stanza one 'glass and grass'. In stanza two 'know and window' and in the last stanza 'glass and pass'.

There is a link between this poem and Larkin's Broadcast poem because to the mum, she thinks that music is a key element in her son's life because it seems she doesn't really know a lot about his personal life as she says 'how hard it is to know'. Broadcast is an important part of her life, and even though the persona and the woman are separate in some ways they are together. And it's also linked to Dockery and Son because this poem is about her son and herself, whilst Larkin's is about a father and his son and how they've made the right decisions in life. Also the last stanza in this poem describes the daydream she is having, looking back at when her father was alive and thinking of how vivid the memory is and how long it was since he left her, similar to Dockery and Son because the persona realises by the last stanza how much time had gone by.