Archive for the 'Writers' Category

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.