The key similarity between Simon Armitages The Manhunt and James Fentons In Paris

with You is the theme, common of both, of the darker side of love. Armitage chooses to
explore this through the idea of a man returning to his wife, Laura, after a war, and is thus a
heavier and more emotive poem, whilst Fenton writes of a weekend in Paris, in which one
tries desperately not to fall in love with the unnamed person that he has come with. The key
differences are the tone: Armitages poem is melancholy and yet hopeful, in places, whereas
Fentons in an anti-romance with a darkly comic edge, reminiscent of such famous Auden
works as Stop All the Clocks.
In The Manhunt, Armitage uses simple language that often rhymes trace / face to convey
the simplicity of Lauras love for her wounded man. This contrasts with his long lines which
run between the stanzas: there is no full stop under the penultimate line. This indicates the
concept that war never ends for the men who fight in it. The structure of the long lines
echoes the idea that she is exploring his body, identifying herself with his wounds and the
extent of the damage, and methodically helping him to heal himself: climb the rungs
skirted along widened the search. His physical attributes (his rudder of shoulder-blade
his damaged porcelain collarbone) can be compared to the places where the man has been:
the woman is trying to reclaim her man from the war. However, The frozen river is his
tears, always present, conveying the coldness in his heart that only her passion can
extinguish. The woman is nursing him, but she is also taking on his role to some extent
usually it is a soldier who would handle and hold a weapon and explore an area prior to
fighting. Two stanzas identifies the schisms in him. On one hand he wants her to love him;
on the other hand he cant stop himself from thinking about the fighting. Also represents
the way that he is both here and there split between the world of war and the world after
war. His heart, however, is not broken but only grazed.
Structurally this is a rhythmic, ordered poem it is ostensibly soothing, but there is some
brutal language, such as a foetus of metal. The orderliness of the poem, the way it moves
down his body from his lower jaw to the metal beneath his chest echoes the ostensible
and linearity of war. The structure also echoes a Petrarchan sonnet, whereby the love
interest would be idealised through a focus on their physical characteristics, from their head
to their lower body. Armitage is subverting this in two ways: both by having the woman
describe the mans body and also by having the love objects body being damaged: his
broken ribs / his grazed heart. Armitage implies that you dont just have to love what is
beautiful: sometimes love can be strengthened by adversity.
In comparison, the structure of In Paris with You is much tighter, as if to signify how the
poet is trying to close up his heart so that he doesnt fall in love. However, as the poem
progresses the structure becomes looser, literally weakening, signifying that the man cannot
resist for much longer. For example, in the first stanza there are seven full stops, but by the
middle of the poem he is using enjambment to connect the third and the fourth stanzas.
This could also suggest that the protagonist is becoming drunker, and thus less rigid, as he
remarks in the second stanza that he likes to down a drink or two. In the concluding stanza,
we feel that his attitude towards whoever he is in the room with may have changed, as he
directs a question, albeit a slightly barbed one, at them: Am I embarrassing you?
There are also key differences in the way that both writers use language to write about love.
One of the most brutal parts in A Manhunt is Skirting along / only then could I picture the
scan / the foetus of metal beneath his chest / where the bullet had finally come to rest. A
man cannot carry a foetus, so Laura is emasculating him. In his currently helpless state, he
has become feminised. However, a foetus will also leave the body at some stage, so this is
also an optimistic way of looking at the situation. The idea of someone having metal inside
him is a harsh image in the first stanza, everything connected to this man is frozen and
hard (the metal), but as she widens the search Laura finds evidence of sweating, which
signals a thawing. Although his body has frozen, his mind is active. He can think, perhaps,
but not feel. Laura is, literally, doing the feeling for him.
In Im in Paris with You, Fenton plays with language, almost flirting with it, just as the
people in the poem are flirting. The word Paris, a by-word for hyperbolic romance in
modern parlance is inverted: Fenton shows the real side of love in a poem in which two
people have basically come to the nearest foreign city to have sex, and all they seem to do is
to stay in their sleazy / Old hotel room, which sounds as if it is both shabby and cheap.
Paris is used as a replacement for the word love in the poem, as if the speaker is not only
rejecting the word love and all the clichd behaviour that goes with it, but actually the
whole idea itself, dismissing it with Ive had an earful. This is contrasted straight away with
I get tearful which suggests that he is not as confident as he seems, this is added to by the
fact that he downs his drinks. He seems to be trying to sound as if he doesnt care about
love but the fact that he says in his first words Dont talk to me of love sets up his
argument in the first line, as if he is ready with his defence, sounding very much like he has a
need to protect himself. He admits further on that he doesnt know what he is; the fact
that he contrasts that with who you are when addressing the speaker conveys the idea
that he thinks of himself as less than human this is fairly common with someone who has
just been dumped and has very low self-esteem. Kipling-esque, he creates language like
marroonded to deliberately rhyme with wounded as if to suggest that revealing the
strength and depth of his insecurity with wounded needs to be covered up straight away
with a light-hearted comment to take attention away from the serious point of his message.
However, it seems that although he is worried about falling in love, there is a part of him
that is doing it in spite of himself, conveyed metaphorically through the fact that there is a
little bit of Paris (love) in his view just a crack, but one that both he and his lover can see.
Fenton draws attention to his main message with the repetition of in Paris with you at the
end of the poem: the poem starts and ends with you. This repetition makes it clear that
Paris is not what he means and in fact he declaring his love for his partner. However, the
you of the poem could refer to the reader, and to the act of writing poetry and being
rejected.
Despite the linguistic and structural differences in the two poems, the reader is left with a
feeling that, however wounded the two protagonists may be, love will find a way.