The Centaur May Swenson Analysis

“The Centaur”, by May Swenson is a narrative poem that is told by a woman looking back on her childhood. Through the various uses of imagery throughout the poem, Swenson portrays a child who is having a joyous time in a field. The imagery that Swenson uses throughout the entirety of the poem helps convey the message about women and their expectations in society to the reader. Firstly, at the beginning of the poem, the reader is relatively clueless of the fact that the child is a girl. In fact, the way Swenson writes the poem, the child sounds more like a boy. In lines ten through fifteen, the speaker says “But when, with my brother’s jack-knife, / I had cut me a long limber horse / with a good thick knob for a head, / and peeled him