A Comparison of 'Afternoons' by Philip Larkin and 'Churning Day' by Seamus Heaney

There are only a few similarities between 'Afternoons', by Philip Larkin, and 'Churning Day', by Seamus Heaney. These feature mainly in the structure of the two poems. They both use enjambment for the whole length of the poem, with just one end-stopped line present in each. Enjambment gives both poems a sense of continuous movement. This is appropriate in 'Churning Day' as it represents the motion of the person churning the butter. It also makes …

…the moment the butter starts to form, but as in 'Churning Day' there are consequences. The boredom of life and responsibilities brought about by children are like the 'stink' in the house 'long after churning day'. The brains of the people in Heaney's household were 'full of clean deal churns', able to think of nothing else but churning day, as the young women's lives are filled with the mundane responsibilities of married life and children.