In Judith Wright’s poem “Naked Girl and Mirror”, the author talks about physically maturing. She starts the poem with the light and airy ideas of childhood. During this time of life, she points out, there is no such thing as a body in terms of something to take care of or something to make attractive. Instead, there is only the mechanism that makes it possible for the child “to laugh and run / and stare at stars and tentatively dance” (2-3).
But as she looks into her mirror, she realizes that she has developed breasts, “those sudden shy/curves furred with light that spring below your space” (13-14). As she talks about these sudden developments that have changed the way she sees her body, trapping her into a form and an idea that she doesn’t want to be limited by, she talks about the “eyes I will not answer; shut out here / from my self, by its new body’s grace” (20-21). Realizing that she is a ‘lovely girl, she feels betrayed because now she will be expected to live up to certain expectations of what a ‘lovely’ girl should be and do.
In Seamus Heaney’s poem “Follower”, the author talks about his relationship with his father. He begins the poem by talking with admiration about how strong his father was, “his shoulders globed like a full sail” (2) and how knowledgeable he was, “his eye / narrowed and angled at the ground/mapping the furrow exactly” (10-12). This development of the father takes up half the poem. The second half of the poem is focused on the speaker, the child.
He describes himself as clumsy and of only contributing to his father’s work, “Sometimes he rode me on his back/dipping and rising to his plod” (15-16). As he highlights how he “was a nuisance, tripping, falling / yapping always” (21-22), the author makes a sudden shift, bringing the audience to a much later present as “today / it is my father who keeps stumbling / behind me, and will not go away” (22-23). He is reminding himself to be patient with this man who has always had patience and time for a young boy who was at least as much of a nuisance.