The Gentle Meditation, The Violets, By Gwen Harwood

Harwood’s poem ‘The Glass Jar’, powerfully illustrates the fears and consternations of childhood. The poem deeply explores both the loss of childhood innocence and transition between childhood and adulthood. Typical of Harwood’s poetry, the central character is never named and as a result, the boy's feelings and thoughts become representative of all children. Her poetry offers new and enlightening perspectives on the most significant stages of our lives, reinforced with the phrase ‘He woke’, a blunt, monosyllabic statement that highlights the passing of time. Emotive and powerful language communicates the transition between a child who’s sleep was disturbed by ‘whispering’ monsters. He became a child who has secured hope and faith in a metaphorical glass jar filled with light. This symbolises a ‘host’ providing salvation, security and

In ‘Barn Owl’, the persona’s switch from being a curious and reckless “horny fiend” to a guilty child by shooting the owl, symbolising the loss of innocence and the harsh realities of life. The persona struggles with the consequences of their actions, having to leave innocence behind and face the imperfections of their choices. Similarly, in ‘Spelling Prize’ it also explores the idea of loss of innocence through the person’s betrayal of childhood friendship for a small moment of victory in a spelling competition. The aftermath of the competition shows the lasting impact of the persona’s actions, as the guilt stays, showing the struggle to overcome perfection. Both poems resonate with the conflicts each of the persona’s face as they face loss of innocence and dealing with the consequences of their choices, highlighting Harwood’s similar thoughts about the two

Our identity is inimitable, yet ironically it is affected by society and enigmatic forces that define our external relationships. This inextricable link between identity and social environment not only shape our identity, but gives us a sense of purpose, however when we fail to establish our sense of congruity with society through metaphysical acceptance, as a result of social isolation we can feel an abyss within our lives often forcing us to look into our inner self, as exemplified in Gwen Harwood’s poetry, especially her poems “At Mornington” and “Mother Who Gave Me Life”. These also reflect and force us to explore the impact time has on people and how this can inevitably lead to a reassessment of one’s life.

Loss is one of the central ideas presented in Gwen Harwood’s reflective sonnet, “In the Park” and W. H Auden’s elegy, “Stop all the Clocks”. Harwood’s poem provides readers with a glimpse into the life of a struggling woman who has lost her identity to motherhood, and this grief contrasts Auden’s narrator who is anguished at the death of his lover.

As a little girl, I saw the world in the best light simply because innocence clouded my judgement. As a child, I was innocent of mortality, as a teen hope, and as a young adult love. However, later on that innocence took on the role of ignorance. Not in the sense of not being knowledgeable or educated on the matter, but rather knowing it all too well that I choose not to acknowledge it. Innocence can be served as an instrument to block out surroundings when problems arise. It is an illusion of reality to protect what the individual desires to be true to what is actual. In Wendy Cope’s poem “Reading Scheme,” Cope writes about an affair more from the perspective of children by using the villanelle form to illustrate the inability of the

Furthermore, the power of Harwood’s poetry to move readers is perfectly illustrated in her hailed poem, in which she meticulously explores how the intensity of passion may triumph over ignorant reason. Within the second half of the poem, we are introduced to a titian-haired girl who remarkably unsettles Professor Eisenbart’s demeanor as he is exposed to her emanating passion for music. Through an archetypal lense, it has become apparent me that Harwood has intended for these personas to embody the notions of passion and reason to replicate the confrontation opposing personalities may experience in real-life scenarios. Harwood presents the initial physical contact made between the two juxtaposing personas through tactile imagery when Eisenbart

To further emphasize her poem, the poet introduces the idea of how “the world’s more than the sum of things.” Through this, the theme of dysphoria is introduced as the character’s whole life is altered when they realize that their life is plain and dull and everything she has been taught of how to live is completely incorrect. Harwood lives in a society that subjects women to live a certain way, which is becoming only a housewife as well as breeding and nurturing children at a young age. This poem brings forward the idea that the character finally comprehends that there must be more to life than what she is living. The poet includes the connotation of how “the world’s more than the sum of things” instead of explicitly stating the epiphany the

In this stylistic analysis of the lost baby poem written by Lucille Clifton I will deal mainly with two aspects of stylistic: derivation and parallelism features present in the poem. However I will first give a general interpretation of the poem to link more easily the stylistic features with the meaning of the poem itself.

Women around the world have been subordinated to men at various time periods and in various cultures. The history of Mexico has led to the creation of a dichotomous view of women who are only perceived as the good wife and mother or as the whore. This clear-cut definition of women’s identity and role in society does not leave much space for another expression of the self. Yet, in the documentary The Blossoms of Fire by Maureen Gosling, women are portrayed as powerful, confident and strong. How did men, stereotypically defined and characterized as “machos” with an exaggerated sense of power and domineering attitudes, react to what is referred to in the video as “matriarchy”? Is there another space other than those culturally predefined in

To attain well-being in life one needs to surround themselves with friends and loved ones. Many researchers strongly believe that a person’s well-being can be directly affected by how many friends he or she has and also by the quality of the friendships. Most literature today uses friendship as a main topic because friendship is progressive and friendship cultivates other emotions and physical health. If we can understand how friendship affects someone 's well-being than we can make the world a happier place. It is easy to conclude from The Samurai 's Garden by Gail Tsukiyama, A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen, and in life that friendships is essential for a person’s well-being.

Childhood is a time in which one’s personality begins to be revealed and shaped. Though everyday events in one’s childhood may seem insignificant, these mundane moments will be remembered long into adulthood. These ordinary moments can be seen in a glimpse of Theodore Roethke’s poems. Throughout Roethke’s childhood and adult life, he was exposed to difficult situations. These events significantly impacted his poetry later in his life, and he uses rhythm to express his poem’s themes of grief, nature, and mental illness, along with rhyme and alliteration.

What themes and ideas does Gwen Harwood explore in her poetry and how does she communicate her ideas to the reader

Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem “Where Children Live” provides a nostalgic sentiment about childhood innocence and the carefree attitude that gets abandoned as children grow into adults. Using the New Criticism critical approach, I will discuss how Nye uses various literary techniques to tell the story of the childhood innocence that gets lost as people grow older. To begin, Nye organizes the poem into three separate stanzas. The first stanza describes the tone of the homes where children live. The second stanza describes what is missing from the homes where children no longer live.

The woman in the poem feels as if she is being forgotten by her husband and children. As she gets older, she experiences loss of loved ones until she is seemingly alone. Not surprising whatsoever, Gwendolyn Brooks has made yet another relatable poem. Whether they admit it or not, everyone in their lifetime feels as if they are lonely in some hard times. Brooks has the ability to create a character that portrays a complicated feeling incredibly well, which is a quality that every writer would wish to accomplish. Brooks’ talent as a writer is heightened in this poem, mostly because she shows how much she truly can transform her writing into a complex poem for audiences to think about. In doing this, she uses personification to add to the creativity of this poem in the line “the grasses forgetting their blaze and consenting to brown.” This is symbolic for autumn and the aging of a person’s physical features, because just as plants age from spring to fall, people age from a child to grow wrinkly, shriveled and no longer full of youth. Brooks incorporates repetition into this specific poem. For example, in this piece of poetry she repeats “I am a woman,” ”it is summer-gone,” and writes “I am cold in this cold house this house.” All of these uses of repetition emphasize the development from a younger woman to the older-age of womanhood. The manner Gwendolyn Brooks goes about writing this poem hints to the

The author shows the reader what she wants them to think, feel, and do with the information through the structure. In the story there is a shift of setting and time. The Flowers begins in a bright morning adventure, but as Myop continues with her adventure, she ends up in a dank part of the woods. This structure is parallel to the story of Eve in the Garden of Eden. Myop is a pure girl who wanders among the vibrant foliage, “...bouncing this way and that way, vaguely keeping an eye out for snakes” (Walker para. 4). Eve is also tempted by a strange plant, an apple, as is Myop. In The Flowers, Walker wrote that Myop was drawn by blue flowers. Such parallels to the snake and apple symbols of the Genesis story will lead the reader to sense that