Poets through the ages have been esteemed as possessing the ability to perceive the ordinary in extraordinary and innovative ways. Poetry captures the essences of human emotion and experience and imbues them with further significance by the literary techniques that typify poetry as the language of art. In her poetry, Gwen Harwood explores many thematic concerns that resonate with her readers regardless of their contexts. The universality of concepts such as memory, inspiration, childhood education and the cyclical, yet final nature of death are transformed by Harwood’s poetry to create fresh perceptions of the continuity of experience and provide permanence to these transient elements of humanity through language. The poetic techniques employed by Harwood effectively communicate distinctive aspects of her themes while allowing them to remain universal.
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.
What Gwen Harwood’s treatment of age and youth allows responders to derive personal understanding of her texts as the universal theme encourages them to draw on their own experiences, values and preconceptions to interpret her poetry. In the poem ‘Glass Jar’, Harwood explores the idea of innocence vs. experience therefore implying that with the loss of innocence vs. experience is gained, highlighted through the use of religious allusions. Similarly in the poem ‘Prize-Giving’ the idea of age and youth is reflected through knowledge vs. creativity, with reference to musical allusions. Through good vs. evil, innocence vs. experience and knowledge vs. creativity, responders are able to create an understanding of texts through their own personal experience. Therefore the recurring ideas of age and youth bring new meaning and significance to the responder.
The significance of place 4. The nature of creativity and the artist The understanding of shared ideas across different contexts is enhanced by the reader’s study of poetry and film. Thomas Hardy’s poem, “The Voice” and Woody Allen’s contemporary film, Midnight in Paris, both effectively convey a range of different emotions that arise from the subject’s longing for the past and the importance of romantic relationships. In “The Voice”, the subject is a victim of his feelings of longing for the past and his romantic relationship. Similarly, Woody Allen’s film, Midnight in Paris, conveys longing for the past through the character Gil Pender, and demonstrating his love for the 1920s.
When The Past Comes Back to Life Memories are a collection of emotions, senses and feelings that subconsciously reside in the back of one’s mind. Whether pleasant or unpleasant, these are types of information locked deep inside an individual. In Joan Baez’s ‘Diamonds and Rust’, structural techniques, repetition and juxtaposition are incorporated to reveal the melancholy behind a treasured yet no longer existent relationship. Though it is very likely that ‘Diamonds and Rust’ depicts Baez’s personal experiences, the piece is a perfect example of many people’s thoughts when going through similar nostalgic situations. Firstly, Baez purposely organizes the lines of the song in a way that creates a literal illustration of the plot.
In answering that latter question, we must come to a full understanding of “Begotten”. In obtaining that understanding we must first acknowledge that this poem, by Andrew Hudgins, is a reflection of the author’s own childhood fears. He lets the reader warmly into the confines of a childhood that was less than his version of idyllic. And he does so by using creative language and incorporating all of the possible meanings of the word “Begotten”.
Textual Integrity of Slessor The representation of textual integrity in the poetry of Kenneth Slessor is ultimately the aspect that captivates the reader. The representation of memories, time, life and death in Slessor’s ‘Elegy in a Botanic Gardens’, ‘Five Visions of Captain Cook’ and ‘Sleep’ through their construction, content and language is significant in appealing to their reader’s senses generally, with also the references of individual readings. Slessor’s representation of the reality of Time and how it is relentless allows the readers to be captivated by his awareness that Time continues and will move past us whether we want it to or not. Paul Grover extracts that “Slessor’s rich verbal textures” through his unusual and contrasting patterns of imagery all serve to accentuate the “intensity of his ideas and his unrelenting exploration of life and death, Time and change” to provide his desire to make them worth having; don’t waste what Time gives you and just live it desirably. To achieve the persistency of Time, Slessor uses a study in contrast of the chronometers in ‘Five Visions of Captain Cook’ to show that despite their difference in how they keep time with the personified Kendal “Climbing out of Yesterday” and Arnold always “hurried with a crazed click click”, both shows that Time will move on and as it goes on, we will as well.
‘Five Bells’ continues to engage readers through its poetic treatment of mortality and mourning. Does this resonate with your own interpretation? Kenneth Slessor was the poet of time, of “the cold fact of time”, as he said in describing the genesis of his wondrous poem “Five Bells”. This poem is strongly engaging through its poetic treatment of mourning, as it is notably encompasses obvious elegy elements, directed towards his dear artistic friend Joe Lynch, but as Slessor mentioned, and from what can be observed, the poem is as much about the compression of memory in time, in relation to symbolic and literal mortality. The poem offers not answers, but questions towards the meaning of existence, and is toned with a sense of failure, loss and desolation, as it seems that neither Lynch's art, nor the art of the poem, can defy death.
Poets use repetition in a very powerful and different ways to create a rhythm, or emphasize their feelings and ideas. That is how they draw a person’s attention to a certain idea. The literary device anaphora is “the deliberate repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of several successive verses, clauses, or paragraphs” (Dictionary). In poetry, this method and other forms of repetition can be extremely useful in delivering the full meaning of a poem. Different cultures have all engaged and written great poetry using the idea of repetition, but each culture uses it to show a different meaning or purpose in the speech.
The techniques that Sassoon has used in the poems are: imagery, simile, metaphor and onomatopoeia. A good poem may lead to sadness, joyful or simply wandering, but it always leads us to think more deeply about life for the following reasons: Firstly, it creates emotion; secondly, it shows us the brutality of war; and finally, hardships faced by soldiers and also by showing about death. Through this it becomes evident that a good poem may lead to sadness, joyful or simply wandering. A good poem may lead to sadness, joyful or simply wandering because it creates emotion. Emotion refers to a natural instinctive state of mind deriving from one's circumstances, mood, or relationships with others.