How do Sylvia Plath and Philip Larkin portray loss

Loss of human life is explored by both poets. Larkin's 'Love Songs in Age' depicts a lady who has lost someone she cared for and the lost love is kept alive through the songs. The short declarative: 'the covers pleased her', implies fondness of past experiences, whilst the rhyming couplet utilised at the end of the poem enforces the sentiment of bonding. In the second stanza the anaphora: 'One bleached […] One marked […] One mended', demonstrates the different stages of love, with 'one' being symbolic of her current loneliness. The verb 'mended' expresses that the subject continues to repair love and memories so they are never relinquished. In juxtaposition to the subject in 'Love Songs in Age' who does not resent her loss due to previous satisfaction, the speaker in 'Daddy' is deeply embittered by the loss of her father, which is shown through the reflexive imagery in the first pentastich. The speaker equates herself to a 'shoe', imposing the thought that prior to death, her endeavour was to appease her father, finding it arduous to construct her own way of living. The simile implies that the speaker finds it difficult to be autarktic as she is fitting into her father's mould, much like a foot into a shoe. This suggests that the fear of her father continued after his death, stunting the speaker's ability to grow and develop. Moreover, on initial glance the phrase: 'poor and white' can easily be mistaken for: 'pure and white', the latter phrase invites the majestic imagery of a creature from the heavenly realm as the semantics tend to be used in reference to celestial beings. Likely, Plath used 'poor' purposefully to act as an antithesis to the 'pure' which it can easily be misread as. The actual phrase invokes the distressing image of a destitute person who feels emotionally destroyed because of their loss. Interestingly, the time frame outlined before this phrase accentuates the speaker's prolonged woes, implying that grievances are intensifying as time passes. Clearly, Plath evokes sympathy in the reader, which acts as a plea for us to aid those suffering from similar troubles.