In order to emphasise Larkin’s outlooks onto time and it’s passing, one can highlight the similarities and differences between Larkin and Abse’s poetry. In ‘Love Songs In Age’, Larkin illustrates the view that time and it’s passing merely leads to many disappointments. The enjambment he uses amongst all three stanzas, “and stood/relearning” in the first and second and “more/the glare” between the second and third; this implies the suggestion that love cannot stop the passing of time and the instances that happen within it, for example the death of the woman’s husband. During the first stanza, Larkin uses imagery to create a memoir of the music sheets that the woman has found, “one marked in circles”, “and coloured”, suggesting that the joy of life, love and happiness isn’t appreciated until age shows what one has missed during their youth. We can then imply from this suggestion that Larkin feels time is only appreciated during the older years of one’s life.
We learn that with the gift of life and living comes death and decay, something we cannot hide from although from this, connectedness and unity emerges. Emily Dickinson’s poem, I gave myself to him.. allows for her to portray that within the institution of marriage, there are risks involved
Good afternoon and welcome to the Critical Study of Texts Academic Forum. Today I will discuss how Gwen Harwood’s poems are valued through the challenging ideas of nostalgia and morality. Memory is a significant motif throughout Harwood’s poetry. Memory can be subjective, fickle and unreliable as demonstrated in ‘The Violets’. The memory process is so powerful as to superimpose images of the past on to the present colouring a faded and melancholy world.
She portrays her personal voice through the use of sonnets, specifically Petrarchan. It is commonly used by males to woo their unattained love. Both composers portray love as idealistic, however it is interfered with by life. It is a universal theme shown through the different time periods. Nevertheless, Elizabeth Barrett Browning advocates that the strength of love can help overcome the obstacles.
Memory, a powerful aspect used in the poems of Gwen Harwood reinforcing her poem’s textual integrity. Personas are shown to use memory as a way to rationalise their inevitable death and combat the reality that time is transcendent. In ‘At Mornington’, Harwood depicts a persona recalling on a vague, imprecise memory from the personas’ childhood. In ‘The Violets’ Harwood uses sensory memory to depict an instance where the persona uses memory to rationalise death and the transcendence of time. She also explores notions of love and friendship through memory in her poems.
Harwood’s poetry captures the essences of human emotion and experience and imbues them with further significance by the literary techniques that exemplify her poetry as the “language of art”. In her poetry, Gwen Harwood explores many themes that resonate with her readers regardless of their contexts. The universality of concepts such as human existence, the dichotomies of life, youth and age, loss of innocence, memory, and the inevitability of death are transformed by Harwood’s poetry, as she simultaneously transcends and embeds social, historical and gender restraints of her context. the grey cloudy back ground also relate to this. Lastly the actual phrases represent a feminist perspective, all phrases are extracts from some of the most renowned feminists to date, these include Harwood has written the poem under the pseudonym of Walter Lehman This suggests that Harwood had a considerable political temperament as well as an ability to poke fun or mock the social constraints of her time.
Havisham & Valentine -Consider two poems by the same poet exploring the same themes. State what the theme is and how the poet revels this. (Pain of love) -You must comment on the effectiveness of these techniques. “Havisham” and “Valentine” are both poems by “Carol Ann Duffy”. They both explore the theme of love or rather painful love.
Comparative essay of “One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop and “Tears, Idle Tears” by Alfred “One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop and “Tears, Idle Tears” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson are both poems which present the subject of loss. In “One Art”, Bishop hold the optimistic view that loss is normal, common, and can be overcome-though she is unsure at the end and presents an element of self denial. In “Tears, Idle Tears”, Tennyson presents true loss whose meaning is so deep he cannot quite fathom, and yet Tennyson presents a different view in that he does not try to resist the loss. “One Art” is a Villanelle by Elizabeth Bishop in which the poet tries to convince herself that loss is a normal process. She denies the seriousness of loss and the sadness it brings by highlighting the commoness of loss and depicting its nature not as a process but as an “art”, evading its disastrous nature.
Judith Beveridge Poetry Writing Task The poem “Woman and Child” refer to the various stages of the transition of Siddhartha Gautama as he proceeded to discover the inner peace that would quell his turmoils, and transcend to the being that we all know today as the Buddha. However, this particular poem is special due to the fact that it is based centrally around the particular feeling that Gautama felt that led him on his journey.The poem “Woman and Child” reflects the mood that Gautama must have after he got married—sad and discomforted, reflective and contemplative o his existence and his reason for being here. This poem offers us insight into his mind and feelings before he set off on his journey. In this poem, the main character appears to be a remarkably lonely and saddened lady despite having everything that she could possibly want. As the poem opens, we are greeted with the image of a lady as she watches her child “chase pigeons” and “kick at the leaves piled high”, giving us every impression of a healthy and contented young boy, adding to the list of things that the mother should be satisfied with yet our central character isn’t.
This poem, “Villanelle” by Marilyn Hacker, could be interpreted in a couple ways such as the distance between couples in a relationship or the distance between societies as a whole. I believe the speaker could be speaking of the general population or perhaps a relationship that has become stale, routine, and no longer appreciates why they are together in the first place. The speaker makes the poem relatable in these ways, whether the reader might feel lost in a relationship or alone in society. In this poem, the author seems to yearn to define the distance a person or a people have between them. “Every day our bodies separate, explode torn and dazed, not understanding what we celebrate.” (1-3) I believe this means how people go on with their day to day, not realizing how they are connected to each other and don’t understand how our unity should give us reason to celebrate.