Poets Seamus Heaney, Robert Frost and Gwen Harwood explore various contrasting poetic techniques in depicting ideas towards the reader. Heaney and Frost portray the idea of becoming overloaded with the concerns of life through contrasting imagery of childhood and nature. Harwood and Heaney look into the idea of the atrocities of war, by Harwood using different techniques of the contrasting understandings of frogs and Heaney’s depiction of people in battle. While continued contrast is seen in Frost and Harwood’s exploration of the idea of givers and takers of life by utilisation of contrasting symbolism in nature.
In Heaney’s “Blackberry Picking” and Frost’s “Birches”, the poets explore the idea of becoming overloaded by the concerns of life …show more content…
Harwood’s poem “The Secret Life of Frogs”, employs this contrasting of frogs in depiction of the now safe frogs with that of those caught in the war, in reference to the French. From ‘Cradling our frogs behind the tankstand’, where the frogs are safe and still seen as real “Frogs”, to ‘Every Frog in the house was killed’, now representative of the butchered French. “Requiem for the Croppies” continues the idea of the atrocities of war through the contrast of depiction of people fighting a civil war. Where farmers oppose the trained English soldiers, ‘Shaking scythes at cannon’, as if primitive compared to the well-equipped English. ‘And stampede cattle into infantry’, without horses or any other means to overcome the English, they are a contrast to each other, a one-sided battle, as ‘The hillside blushed, soaked in our broken wave’. In utilisation of these contrasts, both Heaney and Harwood depict the atrocities of war such as the butchering of the French, as ‘The big boys blew them up and spiked them’ through the representation of frogs, and the merciless slaughter of the farmers in the civil war, ‘The fatal …show more content…
The poem “Father and Child – I Barn Owl” speaks of Harwood as a child, where one morning she ‘Rose, blessed by the sun’, the sunlight being a symbol of life and renewal. In Frost’s “Design”, he too depicts a positive symbol through that of a heal-all flower, both in a literal and figurative sense as a symbol of life and hope. However, in “Design” Frost is quick to contrast this positivity in life through the flower with a spider atop the flower, as ‘Assorted characters of death and blight’. The spider atop the flower is ‘Holding up a moth’ symbolising both a literal and figurative representation of death, and as if we like the moth are trapped by the inevitability of death, while always just within reach of life, or rather the heal-all flower. Similar to Harwood’s poem when she moves from the rays of morning light, to grasping her father’s gun in order to shoot the owl, she feels like a ‘Master of life and death’ therefore, contrasting with the light she had once risen to, the giver of life, to then equipping herself with a gun and becoming the taker of life. Both poems express this harsh contrast so as to contradict the initial idea of life, how death forever looms around life, either we be the causers like Harwood, or in Frost’s where life is designed to have both creators of life and facilitators of death in close
In Heaney’s “Blackberry Picking” and Frost’s “Birches”, the poets explore the idea of becoming overloaded by the concerns of life …show more content…
Harwood’s poem “The Secret Life of Frogs”, employs this contrasting of frogs in depiction of the now safe frogs with that of those caught in the war, in reference to the French. From ‘Cradling our frogs behind the tankstand’, where the frogs are safe and still seen as real “Frogs”, to ‘Every Frog in the house was killed’, now representative of the butchered French. “Requiem for the Croppies” continues the idea of the atrocities of war through the contrast of depiction of people fighting a civil war. Where farmers oppose the trained English soldiers, ‘Shaking scythes at cannon’, as if primitive compared to the well-equipped English. ‘And stampede cattle into infantry’, without horses or any other means to overcome the English, they are a contrast to each other, a one-sided battle, as ‘The hillside blushed, soaked in our broken wave’. In utilisation of these contrasts, both Heaney and Harwood depict the atrocities of war such as the butchering of the French, as ‘The big boys blew them up and spiked them’ through the representation of frogs, and the merciless slaughter of the farmers in the civil war, ‘The fatal …show more content…
The poem “Father and Child – I Barn Owl” speaks of Harwood as a child, where one morning she ‘Rose, blessed by the sun’, the sunlight being a symbol of life and renewal. In Frost’s “Design”, he too depicts a positive symbol through that of a heal-all flower, both in a literal and figurative sense as a symbol of life and hope. However, in “Design” Frost is quick to contrast this positivity in life through the flower with a spider atop the flower, as ‘Assorted characters of death and blight’. The spider atop the flower is ‘Holding up a moth’ symbolising both a literal and figurative representation of death, and as if we like the moth are trapped by the inevitability of death, while always just within reach of life, or rather the heal-all flower. Similar to Harwood’s poem when she moves from the rays of morning light, to grasping her father’s gun in order to shoot the owl, she feels like a ‘Master of life and death’ therefore, contrasting with the light she had once risen to, the giver of life, to then equipping herself with a gun and becoming the taker of life. Both poems express this harsh contrast so as to contradict the initial idea of life, how death forever looms around life, either we be the causers like Harwood, or in Frost’s where life is designed to have both creators of life and facilitators of death in close