Gwen Harwood: Poems Literary Elements

The poem ‘’Anniversary’’ is told from the perspective of a first person subjective point of view.

The poem entitled ‘’In the Park’’ is written in an iambic pentameter.

In the poem ‘’Barn Own’’, the bird which the narrator kills is used as a metaphor to suggest the narrator’s innocence. By killing the owl, the narrator gives up her own innocence and starts a new chapter in her life, namely adulthood.

We find an alliteration in the line "To the wind she says, ‘They have eaten me alive’’’ in the poem ‘’In the Park’’.

In the poem ‘’Barn Own’’, the narrator sneaked out in the middle of the night to go and kill an own in the barn. In the beginning of the poem, the narrator is use of what she wants and goes confidently into the barn. After shooting the owl however, the narrator becomes scared and even disgusted, seeing the owl in a pool of its own blood. The narrator’s father then comes out but, instead of sheltering the narrator from the horrors of death, makes the narrator finish what she had started, namely to kill the bird.

The poem entitled ‘’Anniversary’’ is a meditative poem.

The action of the poem ‘’Barn Own’’ takes place in the childhood home of the narrator, during an early morning.

The tone in the poem ‘’In the Park’’ is a depressive and desperate one, showing the true state of the single mother in the park.

The protagonist in the poem ‘’Anniversary’’ is the narrator and the antagonist is her lover.

The major conflict in most of the poems in the collection is between reality and expectations.

The poem ‘’Barn Owl’’ reaches its climax when the narrator shoots the owl which lived in her parents’ barn and when the narrator sees the own struggling to stay alive.

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In the poem entitled ‘’In the Park’’ the female character claims in the beginning that she is happy and fine with the way her life turned out to be. This is however an understatement as when she remains on her own she admits that her life is miserable.

In the poem entitled ‘’Barn Owl’’ the narrator suggests the idea she lives a double life, one of which her parents are not aware of.

The term ‘’you’’ is used in most of the poems as a general term to make reference to the narrator’s previous lovers.

We find a personification in the line ‘’owl blind in early sun’’ in the poem ‘’Barn Owl’’.

We find hyperbole in the lines ‘’shadows grazing eastward melt /from their vast sun-driven flocks/ into consubstantial dusk’’ in the poem ‘’Last Meeting’’.

We find onomatopoeia in the lines ‘’ one sound/ echoed through all the whispering/ galleries of green’’ in the poem ‘’Anniversary’’.