Twentieth Century comparisons: Old Man, Old Man by U A Fanthorpe and "Warning" by Jenny Joseph.

... Twentieth Century comparisons: Old Man, Old Man by U A Fanthorpe and "Warning" by Jenny Joseph Fanthorpe's "Old Man, Old Man" and Joseph's "Warning" are both poems about old age; one is a third person observation of a saddening and deteriorating picture of her father, whilst the other is a first person projection of how the poet looks forward to exploiting the eccentricities of old age. Both poets paint very vivid pictures of the later years. Fanthorpe starts this process by painting her father as a pale shadow of the do-it yourself specialist that he used to be; a man who "did it himself". Now his hands "shamble" and his eyesight fails; she remembers "when he saw better". To accentuate his pitiful state she produces a list using extensive hyperbole to demonstrate how capable he used to be. "Lord once of shed, garage and garden"..."world authority on twelve different sorts of glue"

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