Two Poems About City Life by Liz Lochead

Throughout Gwen Harwood’s "Selected Poems", Harwood continually seeks to examine the many different faces of human nature, which have been heavily influenced by her experiences as a child, a woman and in the moments prior to her death. Her poems explore and reveal the power of reminiscence and memories, rebellion against authority, as well as the idea of mortality, which are illustrated by many of Harwood’s different personas.

This imagery makes me think that sometimes we need to disregard conventional wisdom and seek our own understanding. Both poems in their own ways are urging us to open our minds and to find ways to expand our

An example of a metaphor in Uncle Timothy’s Ships, by Summer Woodford, is “They are…’… ‘What I am. They are trapped. They haven’t taste freedom” (Woodford 2). Uncle Timothy is comparing himself to the ships. He is trapped.

George Ella Lyon is a storyteller and that can be seen throughout her amazing collection of poems in the piece Many Storied House. The reader is able to experience everything with the family as it happens through the halls of George Ella’s family home. Lyon takes the reader through a range of emotion with the narrator. George Ella brings so many personal issues and hardships to light for the reader to walk alongside her down the hallways of her childhood. The style that Lyon uses, allows the reader to experience the emotions felt by her during these parts of her life. Weather is be her parents marriage issue or her own struggles with suicide and sexual abuse. We get to explore the different personalities and

Gwen Harwood, a contemporary female poet, born in Brisbane Australia in the 1920 's, wrote her poetry during a time where Australian society held dominant gender ideologies that focused on domesticating women. A widely held belief of a passive, nurturing mother figure who looked after her children and complied with her duties as a 'house-wife ', whilst men were viewed as the sole source of income and had a minimal nurturing role with children, was shared, along with ideas of male superiority, and of masculine qualities being superior to feminine qualities, both of which were only expected to be embodied by males and females respectively. The construction of people, places and institutions through poetic conventions in Harwood 's poetry allows the audience to identify these cultural beliefs in conventional gender roles and expectations within 1950 's Australian society in particular. These constructions critique the attitudes and values of the time, especially where women are concerned, and thus position the audience to reject the patriarchal assumptions of the time. Her poems Suburban Sonnet and Prize Giving are can be perceived as radical interpretations and criticisms of the views of the time they were written in, and attest to Harwood 's own beliefs of female independence and placing value on feminine and masculine roles and qualities equally. Harwood grew up with the main female figures in her life being her mother and grandmother, who were both very independent; her

The notion that ordinary, everyday experiences encompass universal emotions of both sadness and delight is central to Gwen Harwood’s anthology of Selected Poems. This Australian poet often uses her personal journey towards self-knowledge and experience of growing up to comment on universal aspects of raw, uncensored life experiences. She aims to convey the idea that motherhood is a difficult experience for many women who resent the way they are forced to abandon their individuality and careers. Harwood also illustrates the sadness in the loss of innocence and regrets in childhood. However, she also reminds the audience of the importance of celebrating the richness and vitality of human life such as the importance and power of women and parenthood. Ultimately the collection also suggests that aspects of both sadness and delight are evident in every human experience.

The two poems are similar in their corresponding feeling of dread for death. Using diction,

The topic of death is either suppressed or masked in both poems. Both poems are very strong and powerful pieces, which allows readers to connect to the issues being told. Throughout “London”, Blake not only implies the difficult times that London went through during the Industrial revolution, but also how many died during this

The poem, Suburban Sonnet, idealizes the harsh realities of an Australian housewife, creating sympathetic tones to the readers. Gwen Harwood was born in Brisbane, Queensland in 1920. Harwood was raised in a family of strong women,

The Laundy cart is a symbol for their love. They were making love very passionately, but their love is not that deep. There were trying to pile so much love and emotion into this “laundry cart” that was not very deep. Their feelings are powerful but they are not deep enough to

A Comparison of Poems About London 'London', by William Blake, and William Wordsworth's untitled poem, composed on Westminster Bridge, are two different poems written with different styles and techniques to portray their feelings towards London. They are both written in the romantic era and are very passionate in the way they convey their (as both are written in first person) differing opinions on London. Wordsworth's sonnet shows all the positive points and that in his opinion London is an admirable place. However, Blake speaks of a much bleaker London, which contrasts greatly in opinion. Rather than writing his poem on opinion, he uses fact to inform and protest against what he feels is wrong

There are similarities in these two poems such as the theme and the observentness of the narrator. Both of the poems themes involve death. In ?I heard a Fly buzz when I died?, the poet writes, ? And then the Windows failed ? and then I could not see to see- ", which means that the narrator?s eyes would not open no more; they had died. In ?Because I could not stop for Death? it shows the theme

The second poem is “Home Burial”, by Robert Frost. The poem is about a couple, Amy and her husband, losing their son causing Amy to go through emotional turmoil. Amy is trying to avoid the situation by trying to leave, but her husband is trying to pull her back, so he can figure out what’s wrong with her and as the poem continues the drama increases. The topic of the poem is sadness, which ties into the theme of Amy and her husband’s relationship is on the rock. The theme in this poem is that everyone goes through sadness, but bottling it up doesn’t help the situation. This is due to the death of their son and as the story continues the husband is trying to understand, why Amy is acting the way she is but she receives the message as rude and offensive. Most of the tension is coming from the graveyard, which resigns on their lot that contains their relatives and son. In lines 1-2, it expresses my theme because it has both

Sylvia’s Plath’s “Metaphors” is about a woman feeling insignificant during the midst of her pregnancy. Striking imagery is used to explore the narrator’s attitudes about having a child. Plath uses metaphors in every line, including the title itself, making the poem a collection of clues. The reader is teasingly challenged to figure out these clues, realising that the metaphors have

The accountants building is more like a watchdog and a representation of how the events that unfold inside and around the laundrette are all part of the new liberal Britain. Nasser refers to the laundrette as a place where Omar can “use a little water to clear his brain.” What was crowding Omar’s mind when he was merely a young man waiting to go to college with seemingly nothing to bother him? The scene suggests the presence of something that “oppresses” Omar and the presence of the laundrette as a refuge, a place for him to “clear his brain”-a space where queer bodies can express their desire. The sounds of water in the background echoes this. Water is used to represent “cleansing, life, and freedom” in films (Shane Brown 2016). The sound of water in the laundrette becomes “a symbol of characters in stories handling difficult life scenarios, a symbol of power in stories and can free characters as well as claim them”(ibid). The laundrette is equivalent to what Gopinath describes as the diaspora-” a space of freedom” (Gopinath pg 14).