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-
This time round the dreams become more definitive. 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. More than death itself, Harwood's poetry shows how many people fail to accept death. 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. Just like The Glass Jar, the allusions to nature show the certainly of change and setting the tone for the events. There she was to prove to herself that she and not her father is in command of her own actions. Although when the subject of the poem is death, the words describe life, as if reluctant to face up to reality. 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. Sometimes the characters themselves are not aware of these changes but the readers are able to appreciate them with the aid of skill Harwood posses in using language to such great measures. The images are of suburbs, lights, birds and trees. By making subtle changes in the ways dreams are portrayed, she shows us that the boy has been changed by his experiences. The pace of the poem changes as two or more verses dwell on the horrible death: bundle of stuff that dropped, and dribbled through loose straw tangling in bowels, and hopped blindly closer. wrenching episode in a little boy's life, where he is made to discover a distressing reality.
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