The 4000-word essay, ‘Hitting Wintry Waters’, on the English Essay page of the London School of Journalism (http://www.english-literature.org/essays/jennifer-maiden.html),
analyses Australian poet Jennifer Maiden’s 1990 book ‘The Winter Baby’. Following the pattern of the book, the essay discusses the themes and concerns according to the four sections of the book: ‘Contemporary References’, ‘
Psalms’, ‘The Midwife’ and ‘The Winter Baby’ but jumps across these divisions when discussing the form.
The essay concludes that the work is initially difficult but then increasingly grips one because the poet is a careful writer paying great attention to thought, form and expression. It observes, “There is a perceptibly acute power of observation at play. … Jennifer Maiden is clearly a poet who is meticulous about how she writes as well as what she writes. Her poetry is a play of ideas, thoughts, expressions and form, diction, syllables, stresses, paradoxes, images.”
The sixteen poems of the first part, ‘Contemporary References’ address a variety of issues relevant to contemporary times: art and poetry and their nature and roles, human
vulnerability and the question of security and insecurity, AIDS, the advertising world, the Aboriginal question, politicians and women.
Part Two is entitled ‘Psalms’ and consists of six psalms to the extent they admit that human beings are God’s creation and address God, but there is a shift in the initial warmth to a benumbing sense of nullification. Still, the poet feels there are signs of life even in the dullness. God is acknowledged as a presence but is not always fair and there is fear at the decay of the flesh. The world of ‘Psalms’ is intense and as personal as the earlier part is outer-worldly.
Part Three, ‘The Midwife’ reads more like a short story or a play about a convict turned midwife, Isobel, the elder child, Eleanor, bewildered at being left in charge of a new born sibling on the death of her mother at child birth, an equally befuddled widower, farmer Thomas, trying to come to terms with the situation, and Dr. Arthur Spencer. The strength of this part lies in its dialogues and characters.
Part Four is spread over twenty one printed pages. This part has eighteen poems, centered round the poet’s daughter Katherine Margot and talks about the birth and growth of the child as well as a mother’s dreams and discoveries. For instance, “‘The Rocker’ compares the control of this child’s rocker to the wild abandon of a rocking horse, the “less thrills / and fewer accidents” to a “harder to master” but a more exhilarating liberty of action and thought. “Vulnerability’, true to the professed “ripe-mooded for metaphors”, ponders on the brittleness of a glass stick with scratches that can be snapped into two as a metaphor for human vulnerability born of “tension” that “tears”. A deceptively innocent title, ‘Nursery Rhymes’ addresses theology and mythology. ‘The Process’ charts in charming detail a child’s sketching that parallels the process of the development of “a sense of personality” – and perhaps even is a comment on art in our world…”
Recurrent images include that of windows that let in light and shutters or curtains that block light. The language and tone is direct and unembarrassed about discussing the physicality of being woman, with references to so-called taboos - “the stain in the armpits”, attractive accounts of sinful emotions such as jealousy, sex and four letter exclamations “fuck”. In ‘Gladiolus’, for example, the flower is “pudendal pink”, “womb-shaped” and the “drag queen of the florist’s”. Since form is as important in the work as content, the essay talks about the elements of form in abut 900 words towards the end, showing how syllable counts and stress patterns, along with similes and paradoxes, have been carefully knitted into the work to strengthen the ideas and expression.