Gwen Harwood relationships throughout poems

James Fenton and Carol Ann Duffy are both contemporary poets. Their poems ‘In Paris with You’ and ‘Quickdraw’ both include the themes of the pain of love. This essay compares how the two poets present the pain of love in their poems, exploring things such as imagery, vocabulary and form and structure.

Through the juxtaposition between past and present, organic imagery and a pronounced tone of both wonder and tranquility marking the language, Gwen Harwood's poetry delineates the nature of grief, fear, and memory as they personify human experience. The events described in "Father and Child", is an exploration of the existential and moral concerns of the poet. Both poems exemplify the ideals of maturity as compared to immaturity. 'The Violets' on the other hand explores the reconciliation of past memories. How one who cannot be comforted in the moment, can be comforted by memories instead. Fear is the main focus on Harwood's most psychological poem 'The Glass Jar'.

Throughout Gwen Harwood’s "Selected Poems", Harwood continually seeks to examine the many different faces of human nature, which have been heavily influenced by her experiences as a child, a woman and in the moments prior to her death. Her poems explore and reveal the power of reminiscence and memories, rebellion against authority, as well as the idea of mortality, which are illustrated by many of Harwood’s different personas.

In the poem “XIV,” Derek Walcott utilizes the use of inhumane imagery that is being counterpointed with the use of happy imagery to show the view of an elderly woman with his experiences with her; the speaker recalls this information by describing his experiences with her with a sense of happiness, fear and appreciation.

Memorable ideas are evident in Harwood’s poetry. In her poem, “At Mornington”, she considers the philosophical idea that the passing of time leads to gaining of wisdom. Harwood shows that growth and development are a critical part of defining our individuality. She has effectively used poetic techniques such as construction; vivid imagery and the context of her own life to explore this idea and contributed to the textual integrity of the piece. External contextual readings and values of the poem have illuminated the significance of the piece in asserting the value of friendship and relationships, and presented various ideas such as the inevitability of death, the significance that past events and memories play in shaping present perception as well as the defining of individuality through growth and development. Together, this contributes to the memorability of the poem.

Gwen Harwood, a contemporary female poet, born in Brisbane Australia in the 1920 's, wrote her poetry during a time where Australian society held dominant gender ideologies that focused on domesticating women. A widely held belief of a passive, nurturing mother figure who looked after her children and complied with her duties as a 'house-wife ', whilst men were viewed as the sole source of income and had a minimal nurturing role with children, was shared, along with ideas of male superiority, and of masculine qualities being superior to feminine qualities, both of which were only expected to be embodied by males and females respectively. The construction of people, places and institutions through poetic conventions in Harwood 's poetry allows the audience to identify these cultural beliefs in conventional gender roles and expectations within 1950 's Australian society in particular. These constructions critique the attitudes and values of the time, especially where women are concerned, and thus position the audience to reject the patriarchal assumptions of the time. Her poems Suburban Sonnet and Prize Giving are can be perceived as radical interpretations and criticisms of the views of the time they were written in, and attest to Harwood 's own beliefs of female independence and placing value on feminine and masculine roles and qualities equally. Harwood grew up with the main female figures in her life being her mother and grandmother, who were both very independent; her

Published in 1997, Marie Howe’s anthology of poems, What the Living Do was written as an elegy to her brother, John, who passed away due to AIDS. Howe’s anthology is written without metaphor to document the loss she felt after her brother’s death. Although What the Living Do is written as an anthology, this collection allows for individual poems to stand alone but also to work together to tell an overarching story. Using the poetic devices of alliteration, enjambment, repetition and couplets, Howe furthers her themes of gender and loss throughout her poems in her anthology.

Regret is a normal thing to feel when faced with death, regret from opportunities lost as well as not enough time spent to even regret from lack of one's actions. In the poem “After your Death,” Trethewey describes the time passing after her mother's

GOOOOOODDDDD AFFTERRRRNOOOONNNNN ladies and gentlemen of the Byron Bay Poetry Festival Committee. I stand here before you in my corporeal form to inform you of two pieces of prose on the theme of ‘life and death’ that are very dear to my heart, I must convince you to include them in your reading. But, why are we, as mortals, intrigued by life and death? Is it the thought of staring willingly into the unknown, not knowing when it will end? Or is it the fact that we don’t know what comes after? Is there such thing as a glistening heaven, or do our spirits lay rested in the garden soil, our bodies rotting beneath the flowers? Well, no matter what it is that makes us so curious about the circle of life, for billions of years’ poets have been

Edward Taylor was not the only emotionally and spiritually struggling poet living in a grueling society, Anne Bradstreet did as well. “In Memory of My Dear Grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet, Who Deceased August, 1665, Being a Year and a Half Old”, her first of three dead grandchildren poem, she uses literary devices such as anaphoric repetition, iambic pentameter, and iambic hexameter. Bradstreet uses anaphoric repetition in the first stanza, lines one through lines 3, when repeating “farewell”, thus showing her reluctance to say goodbye to her beloved grandchild, Elizabeth. Bradstreet intentionally uses iambic pentameter to mimic and heartbeat, showing the heartfelt and heartbreaking nature of her loss. She uses iambic hexameter to break the rhythm of the heartbeat she has built into her poetry, giving way to the traumatic and heartbreaking loss.

In “The Mother” by Gwendolyn Brooks, a voice is given to a woman grieving her unborn children. The reader of this poem is subjected to the same feelings the speaker possess. The unnamed speaker feels heartache and guilt for the lives that were taken away from the children and she feels adoration for the lives that could have been if it were not for her taking their life away. The author uses metaphors, rhyme schemes, and imagery to develop the theme and tone of the poem. Without taking a side on the very politicised topic of abortion, Brooks is able to describe the feelings of a woman who has had multiple abortions.

The astonishing poem, Perhaps by Vera Brittain is engaging and intuitive to the reader. interprets to the reader through her writing how she feels when trying to accept the passing of loved ones, specifically her fiance as to whom she wrote this for. The reader can interpret this by of the use of the word Perhaps, which were in the first line of every stanza. Reading Perhaps and understanding the way Brittain is with her words could remind readers of a loved one that might have passed away, also reminding them of the way they have accepted their loved one's death or even how to.

In the poem “Remembrance,” Emily Bronte writes about a person who mourns the death of a loved one. Since no names are explicitly given, however, ambiguity surrounds the identity of the speaker and loved one. One interpretation is that the persona is Bronte herself, having lost her mother and sisters at a young age. Another interpretation is that the persona is simply a figure through which Bronte expresses the general experiences of love, loss, and memory. However, after reading the poem, it is hard to imagine someone crafting such a powerful piece without having personally experienced something similar. Nevertheless, throughout the poem, the speaker experiences tension between letting go of and holding onto memories of the past, as shown through

Memories play a significant role in the poetry of Carol Ann Duffy, particularly her recollections of childhood places and events. The poem “Originally,” published in The Other Country (1990), draws specifically from memories of Duffy's family's move from Scotland to England when she and her siblings were very young. The first-born child, Duffy was just old enough to feel a deep sense of personal loss and fear as she traveled farther and farther away from the only place she had known as “home” and the family neared its alien destination. This sentiment is captured in “Originally,” in which it is described in the rich detail and defining language of both the child who has had the experience and the adult who recalls

Perhaps no other sentiment is so prevalent in poetry, as that of love. The mere word brings to mind images of romantic affection, lovers entangled in each other’s arms, stolen sidelong glances, whispered words of endearment, and an all-encompassing emotion that transcends the physical, an emotion that is experienced within all realms of being. However, in both life and poetry, the more joyous sentiments of love are often accompanied by images of loss and heartache, a contrast which heightens the imagery experience. The fact that love exists more on a spiritual level than a physical one serves only to heighten the difficult task of describing it adequately, for how can one articulate each facet of such a wonderfully vague human emotion?