Janet Frame
Model Essay – The Poetry of Janet Frame
What features of Janet Frame’s poetry contribute to the distinctive character and voice of her poems? Discuss.
There are several features of Janet Frame’s poetry that contribute to the distinctive character and voice of her poems. Without a doubt, the most distinctive characteristic of her poetry is her use of simple, yet extraordinarily rich imagery. Another characteristic of her work is her focus on the natural world. Yet another aspect of Frame’s work is that many of her poems deal with the themes of acceptance and the growth from innocence to experience.
Frame’s use of vivid imagery, bursting with meaning, is certainly what is most memorable about her poetry. She uses images familiar to all of us, but in unusual, extraordinary ways. The poem Yet Another Poem about a Dying Child is about a terminally ill boy who welcomes death as a release from his pain. His parents, naturally, do not want him to die and try to deny the fact that he is gravely ill. Throughout the poem, Frame uses images important to and appropriate for a small child – “trees”, “stars”, “spring flowers”, “pebbles”, a “penny”. “Trees and stars” are used as symbols of childhood wonder and a child’s fascination with the natural world. We understand clearly the boy’s painful situation when Frame describes his “pebbles of diseased bone.” Frame uses the image of a “ penny of light” as a metaphor for life. These ‘child –friendly’ images culminate in her use of a “kind-furred spider” as a metaphor for death in the last stanza of the poem. She speaks of the boy caught in a “web of pain”, unable to extract himself until the spider comes. What is particularly interesting about this last stanza is the way she juxtaposes images with connotations of comfort and peace – “night-lamp eyes”, “soft-tread”, “wrap him warm”, “carry him home” – with the reality and finality of death. In the abrupt last line of the poem she writes that the “kind-furred spider” will
What features of Janet Frame’s poetry contribute to the distinctive character and voice of her poems? Discuss.
There are several features of Janet Frame’s poetry that contribute to the distinctive character and voice of her poems. Without a doubt, the most distinctive characteristic of her poetry is her use of simple, yet extraordinarily rich imagery. Another characteristic of her work is her focus on the natural world. Yet another aspect of Frame’s work is that many of her poems deal with the themes of acceptance and the growth from innocence to experience.
Frame’s use of vivid imagery, bursting with meaning, is certainly what is most memorable about her poetry. She uses images familiar to all of us, but in unusual, extraordinary ways. The poem Yet Another Poem about a Dying Child is about a terminally ill boy who welcomes death as a release from his pain. His parents, naturally, do not want him to die and try to deny the fact that he is gravely ill. Throughout the poem, Frame uses images important to and appropriate for a small child – “trees”, “stars”, “spring flowers”, “pebbles”, a “penny”. “Trees and stars” are used as symbols of childhood wonder and a child’s fascination with the natural world. We understand clearly the boy’s painful situation when Frame describes his “pebbles of diseased bone.” Frame uses the image of a “ penny of light” as a metaphor for life. These ‘child –friendly’ images culminate in her use of a “kind-furred spider” as a metaphor for death in the last stanza of the poem. She speaks of the boy caught in a “web of pain”, unable to extract himself until the spider comes. What is particularly interesting about this last stanza is the way she juxtaposes images with connotations of comfort and peace – “night-lamp eyes”, “soft-tread”, “wrap him warm”, “carry him home” – with the reality and finality of death. In the abrupt last line of the poem she writes that the “kind-furred spider” will