Archive for the 'Poetry' Category

Poem: Suburban Sonnet by Australian poet Gwen Harwood

I found this poem to be most unsatisfactory at first. Technically, it is called a sonnet but it is a poorly written one when I compare it to most of Harwood’s technically beautiful poems. While it does have a regular rhyming scheme like many other sonnets (abab cdcd efg efg) it is not strictly in iambic pentameter throughout. (To be fair, even the great GM Hopkins broke this “rule” on many occasions.)

I am particularly concerned about the last line. The stressed syllables are not iambic like the rest of the poem, and this has the effect of jarring on the reader. I can’t help but wonder if this was done deliberately by the poet in order to highlight the shattered dreams of the subject.

The poem is about a young mother who practices her piano playing while two toddlers play and fight around her feet. This could well have been a reflection on the poet’s own unrealised ambitions to play professionally. Her young family have stolen her dreams and she now wallows in a suburban nightmare of crying children, pots boiling over, washing dishes and thinking only of how to make ends meet by reading articles like Tasty dishes from stale bread. The irony of the symbolic dead mouse only reflects her own musical goals which are effectively like the corpse of the mouse.

Reference:

Harwood, Gwen, 2001, Selected Poems. Penguin, Camberwell.

Poem: The Violets by Australian poet Gwen Harwood

            In this very lyrical poem the poet again harks back to times when she was a child growing up in Queensland. It had been a hot afternoon, and she had obviously needed an afternoon nap. On waking she innocently asks her mother for breakfast. She gently scolded ‘It will soon be night, you goose.’ She wonders where the day, especially the morning, has disappeared, and grieves for the lost time.

            There is a circular movement of thought within the poem. At the beginning she is kneeling to pick some violets, ‘frail melancholy flowers’ she calls them, and the poem concludes with the line, ‘Faint scent of violets drifts in air.’ They symbolise the sad feeling she has when she realises that a part her day has been stolen by the unconsciousness of sleep.

            There are some very lyrical lines in this poem. Expressions such as ‘The melting west is striped like ice-cream’ and ‘dusk surrendered pink and white/ to blurring darkness’ are quite memorable.

            The poem is written in iambic tetrameter throughout. It also has a consistent and very complex rhyming scheme (abcdcabd).

Reference:

Harwood, Gwen, 2001, Selected Poems. Penguin, Camberwell.

Poem: In Hospital by Australian poet Gwen Harwood

            This poem graphically relates the pain and distress the poet experienced at one point in her life. ‘I dare not stir/ for what may wake, for what pain may wake.’ Anyone who has endured excruciating pain knows too well that the anticipation of pain is sometimes just as bad as the real thing.

            Momentarily though, she experiences freedom from pain when her daughter brings a jar full of a child’s sea-side treasures gathered on a visit to the beach. This brings a flood of pleasant memories, and I felt, as the reader, swept along in the touch, taste and smells of the salty objects in the jar. It was like being there.

            But suddenly the pain returns: ‘Pain splinters me./ I am cracked like glass.’ That is a stunning metaphor. Throughout the poem she relates the agony of the pain, and contrasts that with the peace of that holiday when she ran on the beach with her child.

            The poem is unmetered and has a very complex rhyming scheme (abcbaddc).

Reference:

Harwood, Gwen, 2001, Selected Poems. Penguin, Camberwell.

 

Poem: Father and Child: Barn Owl by Australian poet Gwen Harwood

            I was devastated by the incident related in this poem. I am a birder (the more modern term for ‘birdwatcher’) and take every opportunity to go out and observe birds. I have written a blog about birds for over three years. This blog now numbers over 800 articles – with photos – about birds. I have over 600 enthusiastic readers every day from all parts of the world. I love birds. To deliberately and coldly shoot such a beautiful creature as a Barn Owl is unthinkable to me. The thought turns my stomach like the day, as a young man in the wrong company, I was urged on to shoot a kangaroo. Viewing the remains devastated me and I cannot recall having picked up a gun ever since.

            Harwood relates a similar devastation at seeing her own horror at what she had done reflected in the bird’s eyes: ‘I saw/ those eyes that did not see/ mirror my cruelty.’ Her father orders her to ‘end what you have begun,’ and she shoots again to finish off the bird, weeping at what had been done. It was an act of defiance on the part of an innocent child, an innocence shattered by that one gun shot at daybreak.

            There is a sequel to this poem. It is a two part poem, the second part being called Nightfall. It relates an incident forty years later when her father is eighty, blind and near death. The solid father/child relationship forged in the barn that morning when the owl was shot is stronger than ever. Now, however, it is the father who is the innocent one: ‘Your passionate face is grown/ to ancient innocence.’

            Both poems are written in seven stanzas of six lines. Both are in iambic trimeter with a regular rhyming pattern (ababcc).

Reference:

• Harwood, Gwen, 2001, Selected Poems. Penguin, Camberwell.

 

Poem: In the Park by Australian poet Gwen Harwood

            This poem relates a small incident in the life of a woman with three young children. She is sitting in the park and obviously feeling very stressed out looking after her little family. We can assume that money is not plentiful (‘Her clothes are out of date’).  A passer-by stops to talk. He is ‘someone she loved once’ but we are not certain that this is the father of the children. It could be someone who could have easily found himself in a similar situation but didn’t ‘but for the grace of God.’

            The young mother tries to put on a brave face by saying the ‘it’s so sweet to hear their chatter, watch them grow and thrive.’ But the last line totally debunks that idea: ‘To the wind she says, “They have eaten me alive.”’ All ambitions have been thwarted – dashed to nothing by the demands of her family.

            Technically, this is a sonnet with most lines written in iambic pentameter. It has a regular rhyming pattern (abba cddc efgefg).

Reference:

• Harwood, Gwen, 2001, Selected Poems. Penguin, Camberwell.