Commentary on the poem "Owl Song"

Authors Avatar by strawb3rryfan (student)

OWL SONG

This poem was published in 1974 and is about a woman murdered by a man after being raped and mutilated.

The main idea of this poem is that society has created an environment in which men are drawn to becoming killers of women because of their objectified and sexualized portrayal. I'll be analyzing it mostly in chronological order but I'll have to jump around from time to time.

“I am the heart of a murdered woman.” This is powerful, attention-grabbing. It gives the reader the expectation that the heart will be victimized. The heart has significance on several levels in this poem.

In the first stanza there are four lines in a row which begin with the word “who”. The word who has onomatopoeia and when spoken resembles the sound of an owl calling for something, or hooting. This is why the poem was titled OWL SONG. I'll come back to this point to further explain.

“She took the wrong way home.” Not she was attacked, not she was killed, she did something wrong. So it makes it sound like her fault. She says not that someone strangled her, it was her who was strangled. It makes it sound like it's her action. It could have said “A man approached me with an evil look and strangled me” but instead it says “I was strangled” the same thing with the next two lines. “shot with care” makes is trying to divert blame from the killer and make them seem less disturbing. “mutilated by a crisp knife”: not by a person, by a knife. The poem has made no reference to a vicious psycho man being the killer. It's only saying she died and was killed.

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“There are many of us.” It's a common occurrence; unfortunate, but it happens. Not something to get too excited over.

The use of the term “feathers” in this poem has two meanings: the first is to associate the woman with the owl. The second meaning is more complex.

|Feathers are often used to attract attention; they are symbolic of the woman's beauty. This implies that the woman was murdered by a man with a sexual motivation because she is attractive. This again places no blame on her killer, but more blames her for “inviting” the killer by ...

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