Gwen Harwood Poem Analysis

The poets, Gwen Harwood, Geoff Goodfellow and Judith Wright, all explore the idea of “individuals and those they love” using imagery and form. Through female perspectives, each poet presents how loving another person can cause a conflict of interests, between wanting a fulfilling relationship and the inevitable pain and suffering that accompanies it.
Imagery is used to illustrate how daily hardships can overpower an individual’s ability to love people close to them, resulting in conflicted emotions. In both In the Park and Suburban Sonnet, Harwood explores how women can lead mundane and unfulfilling lifestyles following motherhood. In In the Park, the woman loses passion and self-identity, as evidenced by her “out of date” clothing and an almost …show more content…
The final line, “To the wind she says, “[The children] have eaten me alive”, is metaphoric of the woman’s unheard opinions and feeling of misery. Similarly, in Suburban Sonnet, the woman’s “zest and love/ drain out… as she scours” is a metaphor representing maternal responsibilities have inhibited her passion for music. Wright’s poetry differs from Harwood’s, depicting mothers bearing a purer love for their unborn babies, a love untainted by exhaustive child-rearing responsibilities. In Poem for Annie, Goodfellow takes a unique approach. Instead of focusing on bland daily minutiae like Harwood, Goodfellow creates distressing imagery to emphasise the brutality of abusive relationships. Use of onomatopoeia with the words, “jammed”, “smashed” and “slashed”, contrasts with Wright’s typified amorous relationships. In Woman to Man, Wright highlights a couple’s passionate and reciprocated love through the assonance of words, such as “chase” and “embrace”, to generate a gentle and romantic sound. Contrary to Wright, Goodfellow shocks the audience through black humour. The line, “while friends got diamond rings/ … she got black ones”,