This lecture demonstrates simple techniques for analysing poetry through discussions of Gwen’s Harwood’s “Barn Owl” and Myron Lysenko’s “Pets & Death & Indoor Plants.”

Introduction

“Barn Owl” is the first of two poems printed under the heading “Father and Child” in Australian poet Gwen Harwood’s Selected Poems, 1975.The second poem, “Nightfall” is a tender meditation on the poet’s relationship forty years later with her father, now eighty years old, blind and near death. She describes him as like Lear, an “Old king.”

All the words in “Barn Owl” are standard English, shaped into simple, direct statements. The poem is a powerful piece of writing, telling an easy-to-understand story of a painful childhood event. “Barn Owl” illustrates the pain of growing up and the process by which we discover that all our actions have consequences. It invites the reflection that maturity is partly defined by the ability to imagine outcomes. “Barn Owl” appeals, because it re-creates a learning experience of childhood which the adult reader can respond to. Readers join each other and the poet in a shared experience and a shared understanding. The poem is a deep and subtle act of communication.

Narrator and Author

A simple assumption that the reader can make is that the “I” of the poem, the first-person narrator, is the female poet, Gwen Harwood, looking back to her childhood. The poem works well emotionally if this assumption is made. However, in reading literature of all genres—poems, plays, novels and stories—the reader should recognise that, however closely identified they are emotionally, the first-person narrator or speaker is distinct from the author. Speakers or narrators are fictions contained within the literary creations in which they appear. This is true even when the literary creation calls itself an autobiography. In novels like Dickens’ David Copperfield and Great Expectations and Randolph Stow’s The Merry-Go-Round in the Sea, the authors are plainly drawing on their own early experience, but it’s a guessing game as to how true to life these fictions are.

Similarly, the story of “Barn Owl” can be read as a fabrication. The event may not have happened to the poet herself. She may have heard the story at a dinner-table conversation, she may have read about something similar, or dreamed it. Because the “I” narrator of the poem is a fiction, some readers might like to imagine that the story concerns a boy rather than a girl. However, it’s not valid to say that since the story is about a child who uses a gun, it’s definitely about a boy. This is to fall a victim, as a reader of poetry, to the gender expectations of our society.

When we’re reading and writing about poetry, a usual assumption is that the author had a particular effect in mind when he or she wrote, and that it’s our job as interpreters to discover what that meaning is. In other words, we assume that the author remains in charge of the work that he or she has created as the ultimate authority on what it contains. This idea isn’t necessarily correct. When we look for meaning in a literary work, we have the right as readers to decide on the meaning. We are limited only by the logic of what is written on the page, by the limit of what the chosen words in conjunction can mean. It is not correct to believe that any or all interpretations are valid. An interpretation is wrong if the literary text–the words as grammatically arranged on the page–do not support it.

Because the author is not the continuing and final authority over the work, some literary theorists have wanted to discontinue studies of authors’ lives as being irrelevant to interpretation and evaluation. This is an extreme position, and most readers who enjoy books and critics who write about literature professionally still want to know about the lives of authors, and about the times and places in which the books they enjoy were written. This kind of knowledge is educative and interesting. Literary history can help us to understand how we came to have our own worldview, because it gives insight into our cultural origins, but literary biography and history need to be seen as distinct from literary criticism.

Gwen Harwood is widely acknowledged to be among the very best twentieth-century Australian poets. Between 1963 and 1990 she published eight volumes of poetry, dealing with both political and with personal issues. In addition, she regularly published stories, critical articles and reviews. Some of her poems are satiric, while others, like “Barn Owl,” are deeply felt and personal. Harwood grew up and was educated in Brisbane. In 1945 she married an academic linguist, and went to live in Tasmania, where many of her poems are set.

• Harwood writes of her “deep inner necessity…to realise in words the moments that gave my life its meaning.”
• Conversely, in accordance with her favourite philosopher, Wittgenstein, she affirms “the power of poetry to infuse experience with value.”

Both of these ideas are applicable to “Barn Owl.” For further information on Harwood and on other Australian writers, I recommend The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature, edited by William Wilde, Joy Hooton and Barry Andrews.

Analysing a Poem: Simple Questions to Ask

PRELIMINARY

1. What is the basic meaning?
2. What is my emotional response?

POETIC ANALYSIS, i.e. HOW DOES THE POETRY PRODUCE ITS EFFECTS?

FORM

1. What is the verse form?
2. How is the poem organised through its stanzas?
3. What is the rhythm?
4. How does the rhythm vary to enhance the emotional impact of what is said?
5. How does rhyme, assonance and consonance enhance the poem’s emotional impact?
6. How does metaphor enhance the impact?
7. How does simile enhance the impact?
8. Vocabulary: How do individual words enhance the impact?

CONTENT, i.e.  WHAT ARE THE POEM’S THEMES AND IDEAS?

1. What is the subject of the poem?
2. What happens?–especially important in a narrative poem like “Barn Owl.”
3. What is the speaker’s attitude to what happens?
4. Who are the people involved?
5. What does the poem conclude about its subject?

The following discussion of “Barn Owl” considers form and content together.

Development of “Barn Owl” through Stanzas

“Barn Owl” consists of seven well organised short-line stanzas, each rhyming ababcc. The tight structure contributes to the forcefulness and directness of the series of statements that make up the poem. The poem opens as the speaker recalls the beginning of her early-morning expedition with a gun, intent on hunting the owl whose habits she knows. The turning point comes halfway, the opening line of the fourth stanza (line 19), in the form of a sharp, short sentence: “My first shot struck.”

Stanza four, the centre of the poem, describes the transformations of both the narrator and her target, the owl.

Descriptions of the narrator in stanzas 1–3 refer to her as empowered: “a horny fiend,” “blessed by the sun.” This is a semi-contradiction, or half paradox which links childish innocence—the horns are her tousled hair—, with wicked power. She is “master life and death” while her father, “old No-sayer,” is “robbed of power by sleep.” Because she is alone and unwatched, she has freedom and power to act as she pleases. The phrase, “a wisp-haired judge” again combines notions of childishness and power: she is a child who holds her breath to avoid the unpleasant smell of “the urine-scented hay,” but her gun can sentence to life or to death.

However, with the transforming act of the first shot that opens stanza four, she reverts to her essential self, no longer puffed up by possessing a gun, no longer empowered by being alone and unwatched. The gun falls to the ground, and she becomes “a lonely child” (lines 22—23).

Similarly in stanza four, the owl undergoes a transformation. In stanzas two and three the owl appears as wild and free. Following a natural law he “swoops” powerfully home at dawn, and perches in the barn. He isn’t subject to human laws or confinement. In the daytime while humans are at work, the owl rests, “to dream/ light’s useless time away” (lines 12—13). The daylight which has empowered the child dazzles the owl (“daylight-riddled eyes”), but he is not phased by this natural phenomenon. The first shot in stanza four destroys the owl’s ability to “swoop:” he is “ruined,” “beating his only wing.” This is the essence of the owl’s transformation in stanza four.

The concluding three stanzas trace further transformations undergone by both the owl and the child. Several phrases suggest that the owl has become less than a creature, that it has ceased to live and has become a stuffed and broken toy: “this obscene bundle of stuff,” “the wrecked thing.” Now, robbed of its wonderful freedom in flight, it is “tangling in bowels” and “hobbled in its own blood.” As it staggers forward, its blood pours out and leaves a trail. Eyes blinded by daylight are another handicap as the owl “hopped blindly closer”; but in this perfectly structured poem the owl’s blinding is a turning point which makes the child see what she has done.

The last three stanzas make a series of links between the owl’s eyes and the child’s eyes; and between the owl’s not seeing and the child’s horrified seeing and understanding. Three sets of lines achieve this effect:

Lines 28—30: “I saw/ those eyes that did not see/ mirror my cruelty”

Lines 37—38: “The blank eyes shone/ once into mine, and slept.” The child traces the final transformation of the owl from life to death through the owl’s eyes. This follows immediately on the second turning point in the poem, “I fired” (line 37). This second shot resolves the tension of the owl’s suffering and the narrator’s indecision. From the instant of the first shot until now, the experiences of the narrator and owl have counter-pointed each other.

Line 41: As the narrator bursts into tears at the full realisation of the cruelty of her action, she describes herself as “owl-blind.” This is a pun: the narrator is blinded by tears because of what has happened concerning an owl; therefore she is “owl-blind.” However, her identification with the owl—like him she is “blind in the early sun”–is the culmination of the counter-pointing between the shooter and her victim.

Contrast with earlier stanzas, and especially with the poem’s opening, reveal the extent and depth of the narrator’s transformation:

1. In stanza one the narrator is “blessed by the sun,” but here she is, by contrast, “owl-blind in the early sun.” The repetition, the fact that it is still early morning reminds the reader that this life-changing experience has taken hardly more than an instant of time.
2. In stanza one she acts confidently: “I rose…crept out with my father’s gun…” and is independent of her father. In the last stanza she has reverted to dependency: “I leaned my head upon my father’s arm, and wept,…”

These forceful contrasts bring the poem around full-circle and make a pattern satisfying to the reader. However, despite this patterning, the poem resists closure. Of course, the child has learned, as I said earlier, that many of our actions have consequences and require forethought. Nevertheless, “Barn Owl” also invites the reader to ponder the meaning of the last words: “wept…for what I had begun.” Of course, this refers to her action of beginning the slaughter of the owl, which her father and her own guilt and compassion have forced her to complete. But the choice of the final word also implies that the narrator has begun to understand the human power and propensity to commit cruel acts, to commit acts that destroy the perfection of wild nature. She has also begun the painful process of maturing into an adult, a process that entails the getting of wisdom.

General Comment on Poetic Devices and Word Choice in “Barn Owl”

This discussion has demonstrated how “Barn Owl” uses language to convey parallel transformations in the child and the owl. Beyond this, you will have noticed for yourselves how metaphor and word choice create powerful visual and auditory effects:

• how the staccato onomatopoeic rhythm and monosyllables of “My first shot struck” underline the irreversibility of the single, momentary action;
• the contrast between the father’s dream of “a child/ obedient angel-mild,” and the reality of “A horny fiend.”
• how the irregular metre of lines 25—28 captures the shuffling movements of the wounded owl.
• and the horrific visual power of lines like “dribbled through the loose straw/ tangling in bowels…”

Because they require attention and call on the imagination–in other words need more commitment–literary works like “Barn Owl” are likely to affect the reader more personally than a film or photograph of the same scene.

Myron Lysenko’s “Pets & Death & Indoor Plants”

Of Ukrainian descent, Myron Lysenko is an Australian performance poet, playwright, editor and short story writer. He has been travelling around Australia doing poetry gigs since 1980, and claims to have published two and three quarter books (!). You can learn more about Myron and his poems at https://allpoetry.com/Myron_Lysenko and find his biography and list of published works in AustLit: The Resource for Australian Literature https://www-austlit-edu-au. Another short biography of Myron and texts of some of his poems, including “Pets & Death & Indoor Plants,” can be read online at https://allpoetry.com/poem/1527818-Pets-and-Death-and-Indoor-Plants-by-Myron-Lysenko.  I strongly recommend that you check out Myron and his poetry. His work movingly adapts the classical centuries-old art of poetry to the expectations of contemporary Australia.

“Pets & Death & Indoor Plants” is typical of his humorous, down-to-earth style. The humour is apparent in the word-play of the second paragraph: “But our dog…died/ our cat…collapsed” etc. (lines 5—10), and in the keenly observed account of the young people’s discomfort at their parents’ roast dinner: “Our minds…boggle/ our bodies…fidget/ our voices…falter (lines 11—16). The situation is easily recognisable, funny and down-to-earth. Beginning with the title, which is repeated in the last line, the poem exemplifies how poetry engages with everyday concrete experience. Both the title and the last three lines are a rueful, comic evocation of modern human life, in which people come to terms with vital issues like making love and death, at the same time as they cope with mundane responsibilities like pets and pot plants.

One reviewer complained that Lysenko’s poems “are more like prose than poetry,” and certainly this poem begins and ends with direct prose statements, in which the young people, i.e. the first-person speakers (“we”), state precisely and clearly what they think and feel. However, it also displays a sensitive awareness about words and their arrangement that lifts it far above prose. Lysenko plays uniquely with the sounds of words in lines 5-10, and again in lines 14-16: “Our minds…boggle/our bodies…fidget/our voices…falter.” “Pets & Death & Indoor Plants” applies the standard device of alliteration (sounds repeated at the beginning of words) with humorous originality. In fact, the poem’s main technique is placing unlike things side by side, as in the title, which is a masterly summing up of the jumble and complexity of life. By these means Lysenko creates a poem that’s immediately accessible, both to listeners and readers.