Gwen Harwoods poetry

In Gwen Harwood’s poetry, the changes in an individual’s perspective and attitudes towards situations, surroundings and, therefore transformations in themselves, are brought on by external influences, usually in the form of a person or an event. These changes are either results of a dramatic realisation, as seen with shattering of a child’s hopes in The Glass Jar, or a melancholy and gradual process, where a series of not so obvious discoveries produces similar reformation. An example of the later case would be Nightfall, the second section of Father and Child, where the persona refers to her forty years of life causing “maturation”. For the most part these changes are not narrated directly but are represented by using dynamic language techniques to illustrate constant change in the universe of the poem.

One of the significant aspects of “changing self” covered in Harwood’s poems is the process in which, a child’s innocent mind, like a blank page, is inked and tainted by some experience. Their hopes, dreams, beliefs, founded on their naive perspective of life, and the way the young restyle themselves consciously or subconsciously as they make new discoveries are all explored.

In the poem The Glass Jar we witness the heart-

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” Then he runs to the “final [forbidden] clearing that he dared not cross,” forgetting in his desperate fear, all the inhibitions placed upon him. There she was to prove to herself that she and not her father is in command of her own actions. The father appears, conducting the dance of death and actually directing the monsters that haunt him.

More than death itself, Harwood’s poetry shows how many people fail to accept death.

The early learning processes of the young are potrayed more adequately in the poem Father and Child where an older child, this time a girl at a rebellious age, experiments with the constraints of authority in an attempt to seek control for herself. Then he wakes and attempts to seek comfort from the monstrance. Set appropriately in the twilight of the day we are taken through the feelings of the women who is narrating the story herself. wrenching episode in a little boy’s life, where he is made to discover a distressing reality. The lines, “His sidelong violence summoned/ fiends whose mosaic vision saw/ his heart entire” are literal indications of his incapability to comprehend what is happening to him. It is here that he is again reminded that “his rival” and contender for the love of his mother, has been taken preference on, and his plight is ignored.

As we can gather from the examples, Gwen Harwood uses language to create dynamic backgrounds and images to subtly delineate the changes experienced by the persona in the poems. ” But this time the approach is less seeking, more slow and uncommitted, reflecting the calmness and control acquired by experience. I saw

those eyes that did not see

mirror my cruelty

Her father comes to her side and makes her carry the responsibility she had assumed to the end by asking her to kill the animal. In stark contrast to the narrative of Barn Owl, the language of reflection and memories constructs Nightfall:

Who could be what you were?

Link your dry hand in mine,

my stick-thin comforter.

Approximate Word count = 1123
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

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