‘The richness of Gwen Harwood’s poetry lies in their ability to lend themselves to particular interpretations, reflecting different concerns and values’. Discuss
INTRODUCTION
The poetry of Gwen Harwood can be viewed in different interpretations reflecting different values and concern, but all types of variant interpretations deal with theme of change, where the persona in all the poems goes through a process of changing, being influence by different factors including time, trauma, memory and discovery. This is clearly evident in the poems “The Glass Jar”, “Prize Giving” “Father and Child”, “Alter Ego”, “The Violets”, and “At Mornington” Even though all variant interpretations all deal with the change the persona goes through
during the poem, they let the responder see many sides of the effect the changing process has had on the persona, thus a more clearer understanding of the persona is amplified with the persona before and after the changes, whereas a single interpretation of any poem wouldn’t give us a good hindsight of the changes that are happening to the personas.
CONCLUSION
By valuing texts in different perceptive, readers are able to respond to a text on a variety of ways and allows readers to fully understand the character as the persona of each poem goes through a transition of change and we understand the feelings and thoughts these persona’s are conjuring up, where only different interpretations would allow, which all create different concerns and values. This allows the text to be valued more to a deeper understanding to be made by looking at The Glass Jar, Prize Giving, Father and Child, Alter Ego, The Violets and At Mornington in different ways.