long distance two by tony harrison was published in the 1978 collection from the school of eloquence and other poems it explores grief love and longing in the first three stanzas through the poet's description of the way in which his father does things for his dead wife as though she is still alive this irrational behavior a symptom of his inability to come to terms with his grief some two years after her death and then through the poet's own realization in the final stanza after the death of his father that his own grief makes him just as irrational as he too finds emotional acceptance of the definitive absence of a lost loved one extremely difficult harrison was born into a working class family in leeds and studied first at leeds grammar school and then at leeds university the influence of his background on his work is evident simon armitage the poet laureate has said that he is impressed with the way harrison deals with his upbringing and background in his poems and more specifically his accent even though his accent only really comes through in this particular poem in line four with pass rhyming with gas which it doesn't for readers who speak with a southern english accent his working-class origins are evident in his descriptions and diction or vocabulary choices such as gas transport pass and tea with which he evokes his and his father's world his experiences of growing up working class while his adult life has been spent in a professional middle class environment has led scholars to describe him as having a predominant fascination with social and class conflict in this poem conflict arises because grieving is a very individual process which can clash with the expectations that society has as a whole about how we should act the poet's father is unable to share with those around him the way in which he copes with his grief i.e by telling himself that his wife's absence is merely temporary not only does this lead to conflict albeit unspoken between people but harrison also explores the conflict in our own minds between our intellectual and our emotional acceptance of the permanence of death i.e the poet's father and later the poet himself know in their minds that a person has died yet cannot accept it in their hearts which leads to knowingly irrational and contradictory behavior the final stanza communicates the poet's newfound empathy for what his father had been going through the poem comprises 16 lines divided up into four quatrains the first three stanzas follow an a b a b rhyme scheme while the fourth stanza deviates from this with an a b b a pattern which coincides with the poem's switch in focus from harrison's father to harrison himself and also with the change in verb tenses from the past to the present the poet employs single or masculine rhyme which helps to enhance the poem's down-to-earth nature in the same vein the poem also contains very little figurative language i.e simile and metaphor harrison instead chooses everyday language to describe how grief is displayed in his father's everyday functioning this is further enhanced by the use of informal language such as you drop in and popped out the poem has a base meter of iambic pentameter although harrison varies this rhythm with the substitution of trochees dumdi and anapistes did it done sometimes creating lines which are hyper catalytic e.g lines 1 3 13 15 and 16 which helps to maintain the poem's conversational feel nine of the sixteen lines are end stopped while the remaining seven are enjambed all four stanzas are end stopped with a full stop which signals a slight change in focus in the following stanza harrison also employs caesura in places to make the reader pause midline the way in which he combines short sentences and end-stopped lines with multiple enjambed lines creates a rhythm which stops and starts which could perhaps be said to imitate the rushes or waves of grief that can overwhelm a bereaved person or also perhaps the intra and interpersonal conflicts that the two men suffer the title long distance alludes to telephone calls to another country usually those which are transatlantic in nature the two refers to the fact that this is a sequel to another poem of the same name long distance one also explores the grief of the poet's father after the death of his mother this poem which i include here for reference depicts a literal telephone call between father and son in which harrison evokes his father's idiolect a portrait is created of a man who displaces his grief by projecting it onto everyday complaints about food and health and who uses his gruff nature to shield his vulnerability this poem gives us a real insight into the character evoked in long distance too who is unable to communicate his grief even to his family effectively creating a metaphorical emotional long distance between them in long distance 2 the term is also meant metaphorically as well as literally and perhaps alludes to the phone calls to his now deceased father's disconnected number in the final stanza his father is now effectively in another country called the past there's a sense perhaps that the poet is trying to make a phone call across the years it might also elude as it does in the first poem to the emotional distance between him and his father as his father did not allow him to get close the poem begins though my mother was already two years dead the way in which the poem's first sentence starts with the subordinate clause places the absence of the poet's mother firmly at the center and puts his fathers in other circumstances unremarkable behaviors into a context before they are described note the way in which the poet constructs this lying is not the fact that she died two years ago that's important but the fact that it's her state of having been dead for the past two years and the way in which it affects the living that is the focus of this poem the adverb already is also an interesting language choice if you think of how it would come across if you substituted only which would indicate that two years is not a long time the choice of already seems to imply a judgment or a lack of comprehension perhaps indicating the perception that well two years have passed isn't that long enough for your grief to have mellowed the poem continues dad kept her slippers warming by the gas note how he refers formally to my mother in the first line and yet informally to dad in the second line does this suggest that he perhaps felt more affection for his dad than his mother we can't be sure the word gas is short for gas fire not only evoking the diction of a man born and bred in yorkshire but also suggesting that the means by which his father lives are modest in line three his father also put hot water bottles her side of the bed presumably to make up for a lack of central heating it's interesting to note that he still observes his wife's side of the bed even though he will never be sharing it with her again there's a feeling perhaps that if he were to encroach on her side he would be acknowledging her permanent passing which would not only be a betrayal but would also be too much to bear in line four he still went to renew her transport pass a transport pass is the document that allows pensioners to travel free on public transport such as the bus and is another indication that their background is not one of wealth his doing various things that would have given her physical comfort in her life actually seemed to give him emotional comfort in her death and play into the narrative that he has created that she has only popped out for a short time the second stanza begins you couldn't just drop in you had to phone the pronoun you isn't used here to signify direct address but is an informal way of saying one or people i.e nobody is allowed to turn up unannounced note the use of two short sentences here creating a caesura or a pause in the middle of the line the brevity of these sentences indicate that there is no negotiation over this and readers who are familiar with long distance one will already appreciate this as a reflection of his gruffness the reason why spontaneous visits are out of the question is revealed in line six and seven he'd put you off an hour to give him time to clear away her things and look alone we understand now that he isn't totally delusional he knows that his wife has died but he can only cope if he imagines that she is still with him but just out of the house and having all her things lying around is part of the charade he clearly feels that he has to hide the evidence of his lack of ability to move on with his life the phrase look alone is significant as it implies some kind of pretense he's leading a double life where paradoxically it's only when he is alone that he can be together with his wife and when he is in company i.e with his son he is forced to be alone his motivation is revealed in the last line of the stanza as though his still raw love was such a crime the adverb still and the adjective raw evoke a wound that is still fresh that isn't healing after all this time and that is just as painful as it was two years ago the word crime suggests a belief that society has an expectation relating to how long grief should last that if you go beyond this then you're breaking some kind of natural law there's a sense that you feel shame the third stanza begins he couldn't risk my blight of disbelief blight is a thing which spoils or damages something the verb risk indicating the vulnerability of his father's mental state and his need to not allow others to jeopardize his way of coping the next lines though sure that very soon he'd hear her key scrape in the rusted lock and end his grief reveal his father to be living in a state of contradictory beliefs he is sure that she will return even though the rusted lock would indicate that she has been gone for an impossibly long time unless the front door was only used by his wife of course we must assume that the image of the rusted lock is meant metaphorically and perhaps is a way of referring to all of the physical signs that his wife is no longer there the stanza concludes he knew she just popped out to get the tea the phrasal verb just popped out is informal not only does it play down the reason why someone is absent it also communicates that they will not be gone for very long the word tea is a term used in northern england for the evening meal and is what people from the south would refer to as dinner the final stanza signals a shift in focus from the father to the son i.e the poet and from the past to the present after nine lines of regular iambic pentameter harrison also notably disrupts the rhythm as well as the rhyme which could be intended to enhance the poet's sense of internal conflict and his own irrational behavior lines one three and four are all hyper catalytic i.e they all have an extra unstressed syllable in that the first i am is substituted for an anapiste diddy dum before reverting to iambic meter the stanza begins with the bold assertion i believe life ends with death and that is all the way in which he reiterates his point with and that is all appears to communicate his categorical refutation of there being any afterlife and in the next line he acknowledges the absurdity of his father's position that he had known she just popped out to get the tea with you haven't both gone shopping from his use of the word both it is clear that his father has now also died and the poet has to come to terms with both his parents being gone the phrase just the same at the end of the line meaning in spite of this or nevertheless indicates that he is about to reveal something which contradicts this hardline stance he confesses that in my new black leather phone book there's your name and the disconnected number i still call the key word in line 15 is the adjective new which indicates that he's transferred his father's name and number into a book that he has bought since his death in the final line of the poem we learn that the poet knowingly calls a disconnected number that cannot be answered there's a real sense of pathos in the final stanza as we realize that the father is now deceased with no sense that he ever came to suffer less from his bereavement and that it is only after his death that the poet can truly empathize with what he was going through thanks for watching if you have any questions please let me know in the comments section below and i'll do my best to answer them don't forget to subscribe to my channel for more videos on english language topics and exam techniques and english literature texts