The Malham Bird - Dannie Abse

From with just reading this poem by the poet Abse, the audience is able to get the impression of a memory occuring from his past with his wife. We see that the key themes within this poem are based upon memory and love due to how much he can remember about his time spent with his wife and how he enjoyed it portraying a positive approach towards the audience. We see his love for her wife the words, "Dear wife" and how close he is to her but also with how different they are due to the fact that he is a Jew whilst she is not and is seen within the last line of the stanza. He gives descriptions of the room where they stayed and of what they did which shows us that Abse is a personal poet for we get the impression that he treasures this memory in his life very much and gives him happiness to talk about it.
As we continue to look through this poem we see that the birds is based upon a religious theme with how it lives in paradise forever due to the fact it did not eat the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. From the line, "when others singing pecked forbidden fruit" we get the thought of these birds being restricted and unable to have the full benefit of life due to this notion of their being rules. We see that the birds have however followed the rules and have benefited with making the right choice for they are being able to sing.
From within this poem we see that Abse has provided us with this positive imagery of a memory and has used a wide range of metaphors to portray that to us. On this poem we are able to make similarities and differences towards the two poets due to the themes and ideas they provide to us. A similarity to this poem would be the theme links of religion, memory and love. A key poem that fits well into The Malham Bird would be The Whitsun Weddings due to how they portray a positive approach to a couple that love each other. Although there is some negativity within Larkin's writing we do see that he is mainly describing the whole scene whilst Abse is more focused on the couple and the moment they are sharing together. This also allows us to link to the poem As Bad As A Mile due to the point about the Garden of Eden and the forbidden fruit within the tree. From this we see that both poets believe that our lives our controlled by rules and we are constantly restricted. However a differerence from these two poets would be how Larkin is more of an observer within his poems whilst Abse is able to connect much easier to his audience due to the fact that he is more personal and open within his writing.