Summary Of By The River By Steven Herrick

The role of family in Steven Herrick’s narrative verse poem ‘By the River’ incontestably shows its impact and importance towards a child's upbringing. The book talks about themes that develop through each poem showing the influence of a maternal figure's death, the family dynamic under the care of a father who has to play both the maternal and paternal role and how parents form the platform on which their child acts and behaves.

In Steven Herrick's verse narrative, the impact of a parental figure's death, particularly the mother, is vividly portrayed against the backdrop of the 1960s where the ideal family dynamic often revolved around the presence of a mother figure, and families without such a figure were not merely pitied but often ostracised