Download `Poetry allows readers the opportunity to reflect on painful emotions

‘Poetry allows readers the opportunity to reflect on painful emotions.’
The painful emotions explored in James K Baxter’s poetry, such as “Wild Bees” and
“Takapuna Business Man Considers the Death of His Son in Korea,” show the reader that
insight can be developed through the experience of painful emotions. The narrator of “Wile
Bees,” through his failure to steal honey from a beehive, learns a respect and fear for
nature. The “Takapuna Business Man,” through the tragic loss of his son, gains insight to
both the futility and horror of war and the emptiness of his middle class lifestyle. In each of
these poems, the reader is forced to confront the painful emotions suffered by Baxter’s
characters, and through this painful experience develop the same insights.
Painful emotions are used in “Wild Bees” to convey the importance of deep respect for
nature. Having grown up in the Otago landscape, Baxter often spoke of his regret of the
“Loss of Eden” when he moved into the city, revealing his own deep respect for nature.
The narrator of “Wild Bees” learns this respect through a painful attempt to steal honey. At
the start of the poem, the narrator sees the bees as a mechanical mass working in
“passionless industry.” He does not believe that the bees have any emotional attachment
to their honey, and so does not believe he will hurt them by taking it. When the bees
attack, however, he realises that the bees are willing to die to save their honey, as
“sentries” and “suicidal live-raiders.” This use of personification and metaphor illustrates
the narrator’s realisation that the bees are anything but “passionless.” Both the narrator
and the reader feel a powerful sense of loss as the bees die, and Baxter valorises their
deaths through classical allusion: “O it was Carthage under the Roman torches, / Or loud
with flames and falling timber, Troy!” This use of allusion also brings to mind images of
senseless destruction caused by humans, rather than animals, causing the reader to
further question the narrator’s early attitude towards the bees. Through the narrator, the
reader feels a sense of shame at their attitude towards nature, and their failure to steal the
honey; “half the honey melted...little enough their gold.” The narrator states, however, that
through this painful experience he has gained insight, through the metaphor, “loss is a
precious stone to me.” The reader shares in the narrator’s experience of this painful
emotion, and as the poem forces them to reflect on this loss the reader comes to have a
greater respect for nature.
The pain of loss also allows the Takapuna Business Man to gain insight. In this poem,
Baxter conveys his disdain for war, a hatred that he inherited from his father, a
conscientious objector. Despite being bullied for this at school, Baxter firmly held his
father’s beliefs, speaking out against the Vietnam war at a rally in Hamilton. In “Takapuna
Business Man,” a father come to understand the horror of war only through the emotionally
painful loss of his son. The unglamorous burial of his son, in “a pit of stones,” causes the
father to question what the war achieves. As in “Wild Bees,” allusion is used to offer a
sense of nobility to his son’s sacrifice: “O Absalom...the sword of Joab rages in the East.”
the allusion to the biblical story of Absalom, who joins an opposing army in anger against
his father David and is killed in battle, is a close reflection of the narrator’s own story. The
poem again forces the reader to reflect on the pain of loss and to feel it as if it were their
own, and through this reflection the reader comes to understand Baxter’s hatred of war.
In “Takapuna Business Man,” the loss of his son also prompts the narrator to see the
emptiness of his money-driven middle class lifestyle. This is seen most clearly where the
father places the “fir tree cone” given to him by his son as a child into his safe in the place
of money. This disdain for empty middle class families is a common theme in Baxter’s
work. At the Hamilton Rally where he spoke against the Vietnam war, Baxter also spoke
out against this lifestyle. A further example of this lifestyle is seen in “your mother’s head, //
High cheekbones,” suggesting that the mother had extensive plastic surgery. The use of
enjambment in these lines emphasises the height of her cheekbones. The Takapuna
Business Man learns through the painful loss of his son that his wife’s obsession with her
appearance was unhealthy and distracted her from caring from her son. This change in
attitude is seen in the line “the harbour’s death-mask sweats in summer calm,” as it implies
that the mother’s “unwrinkled forehead of eighteen” is also a death-mask. The father’s
painful regret is personified as “the beast / Of anger, time and age” which “will grind my
skull / To powder!” Through the father’s reminiscing and lamenting the loss of his son, the
reader also feels the pain of the loss and see that it is intensified by the Business Man’s
empty lifestyle and unloving relationship with his son while he was alive.
Baxter’s “Wild Bees” and “Takapuna Business Man” use painful emotion, especially loss,
to convey insights. “Wild Bees” uses a painful experience to emphasise the greatness of
nature, while in “Takapuna Business Man” Baxter attacks both war and the empty middle
class lifestyle, through the portrayal of a single individual.