Gwen Harwood Essay

Poetry artistically captures individual experience, sentiment and characteristics.

Gwen Harwood employs a range of fictional and poetic techniques including imagery, religious allusions and personification to show the universality of principles such as loss, death, recollection and years as a child. Through this kind of, Harwood’s poetry to produces clear and strong perceptions of the continuity of knowledge and provide resolution to these transient elements of humankind. In ‘Triste, Triste’, Harwood explores the core designs of content coital unhappiness and the contrary nature in the physical and spiritual area that are made by the human body.

These elements all refer to the human experience and growth of oneself. That is, the physicality with the skeleton, or perhaps frame, as well as the intellectual and creative importance of the brain as a muscle. This is of the term “Triste” is sad and mournful therefore the replication of this phrase in the name is a sign of Harwood’s reflection within the loss of creativity. In the initial stanza, a yearning and apparent dependence on ongoing physical passion inside the continuous “space between take pleasure in and sleep” presents the notion of sleeping and its incongruously nurturing qualities for the mind and the body despite the idleness of the physique during this time of restoration.

The phrase furthermore provokes the reader to think about such moments in their very own life, and also to reflect on “space” with reconditioned significance and exactly how important it truly is for the mind and the home. Harwood identifies this process like a “prison”, “eyes against glenohumeral joint keep all their blood dark-colored curtains tight… body proceeds back like a stone. ” Parallels are drawn between ideal which the imagination can be described as separate business and the parting between the physical skull and its particular place intended for the brain to reside in, the brain appears like the thoughts or manufacturer of creative imagination.

The composition makes certain and crystal clear biblical recommendations to the Revival through symbolism furthermore providing to the innovative self, since it is aligned while using Christ, walking “to Easter light”. The necessity of the escapism and discovery of religious intensity is strongly strengthened. In addition to the biblical references, divine imagery can be implied throughout the ‘Angelic light’. The continuous use of representation and images encourages someone to benefit the indistinct moments of passionate afterglow as chance to liberate the imagination.

Harwood creates distinctiveness between the divine light present in the second stanza along with the “darkness” of tangible “sleep and love” through her usage of enjambment and repetition which will draws awareness of the ending of innovative inspiration. Within the last stanza, Harwood recombines the spirit while using corporal do it yourself which finally conveys the necessity of intimacy literally and the evanescence of creative passion. Additionally , the physical self together with the emotional self, are helped bring together as you entity which in turn cannot are present without the other thus they possess equal importance and value, inspite of having individual functions.

Through the poem Gwen Harwood reephasizes the paradoxon that implies that extreme delight must match with severe pain. Furthermore to her references to damage and sadness, Gwen Harwood amalgamates various elements of human being experience through the reflection of memory as a primary motif. The importance of memory can be expressed through harmonizing various layers of the individual’s life and their distributed experiences to create a wholeness that reconciles a single with the finality of loss of life.

This concept is usually expressed through common designs of childhood, friendship and loss allowing her suggestions to rest firmly with the target audience. ‘At Mornington’ is a representation on mortality, and the benefit of memory space in terms of rising life. The thematic worries of loss and grief unravel throughout the first stanza. The character describes her relationship with her dad and creates him being a protective physique through her pondering of childhood thoughts.

This design of normal water is representative of serenity, peace and reflection which is furthermore established through the personification from the “wave” that has been “caught” and “rolled”. Harwood distinguishes the finality and formality of loss of life, which is conveyed in the poem through the lifeless imagery, the durability of “marble and granite” gravestones with the fragility of memory, “fugitive as light” to convey the gravitational posture of individual life as opposed to the perceptions of experience we choose to preserve in our memory. A connection is created between memory space and reduction as they are the two products in the past and Harwood uses this to reflect on the significance of valuing the present.

This is certainly furthered throughout the “the wholeness of this day” shared between two friends. The poem is established through Harwood’s recollection of her early the child years when your woman “leapt” by her father’s arms in to the sea. The lady views her childish tenacity, evidently throughout the repetition of “the next wave”. Idea is once again reinforced through the blue head referencing drinking water and the ocean with a fundamental commentary on the qualities of water and childhood likewise.

This concept of childhood storage is later on referenced in Harwood’s picture of pumpkins “rising…in airy defiance of nature”, a metaphor for her continuous trials resistant to the inevitability of death and emergence in “the fastness of light”. The develop of the poem becomes reflecting as the persona and her good friend ‘stand in silence amongst the avenues of the dead’, which makes a need for comfort and comfort and ease. The peace and quiet of a dead human being can be furthermore referenced through the picture of the skull as it is similar to the result of fatality.

Reflection is regarded highly throughout ‘At Mornington’ hence the ongoing reference to quiet is important since relfection needs silence and tranquillity. The innocent perception that defying gravity ‘was only an issue of balance’ is shown in the persona’s present longing to go beyond the gravity of loss of life ‘in cut defiance of nature’. Thinking about memory is usually furthered by using a dream where the persona begins to overcome transient existence with loss of life.

The raw and emphasized emotion in the poem converts sober expression where the identity ‘thinks of death not any more’ but is able to are up against death through the experience of ‘dreams, pain, thoughts, love and grief’. By dwelling on mortality comes forth a comfort and acknowledgement inspired by unifying the inescapability of death with an approval of being human and a great appreciation of memory and friendship. Also, in her poem “The Violets”, Harwood blends the emotion of grief which has a reflection on memory in order to achieve a express of getting back together.

The first stanza describes a “melancholy” setting exactly where “frail” violets excite the persona’s recollection of a important childhood experience. Harwood’s mature grief is mirrored by her teen outrage at that time which have been “stolen” via her, and like death, the loss of time is special. However the child is in the end “reconciled” by the “sweetness” in the persona’s parents, depicted through Harwood’s use of domestic, homely imagery in the “long hair” and “wood stove”.

There is also a conviction in “years are not able to move” that conveys extreme awareness that memory’s “lamplit presences” can easily in times of give up hope, be because real to individuals as this current, and so a source of comfort. The idea of delete word consolation in loss can be one that can resonate with readers trying to find relief, as well as the lingering “scent of violets” shows the longevity of memory and conveys it as everlasting, continuing the presence of those bodily lost. Gwen Harwood is exploring and goes into the styles of time, death, childhood and loss which can be all innate to human being experience.

The lady effectively uses a range of poetic and literary methods to explore transience, finality and the imperative function of storage.