Rachel Richardson uses changing perspectives and consistent metaphors across her poems “Aquarius” and “Heartbeat” to connect both poems to the theme of childbirth, establishing that the process of reproduction is a base part of the natural world and cannot be separated from it. First, in her poem “Heartbeat,”it is both through the use of changing pronouns and through liberal use of metaphors connecting birth and children to the natural world that Richardson can write a poem about birth as a part of nature. She splits her poem “Heartbeat” into three paragraphs, each with a different perspective, by changing the pronouns from “you” to “we” to a mixture of both “you” and “we”. She thus changes from writing about the baby using “you” to looking at its creation through the use of “we” so that she can write from the point of view of the cells crafting the baby’s body to the use of both pronouns in order to talk about the baby after birth. She connects these changing perspectives by layering her second stanza with nature metaphors like “nights in winter, we heard the joints / crack like they would give” to craft the creation of a house as a metaphor for the creation of a child from the perspective of the body and cells (Heartbeat). She finishes off with heavier metaphors like “it’s spring and surprising / shoots present themselves around the oak tree” and “oh we say one morning, daffodils” (Heartbeat). Not only is the baby compared to an oak tree in spring, a season known for rebirth and renewal, but daffodil flowers represent new beginnings and birth in flower language, crafting an even heavier metaphor that is still synchronous with the building of the “house” in winter and the birth of the child in spring. It is thus through the use of changing perspectives through pronoun swaps and metaphors connecting birth and babies to the seasons and nature that Richardson gets her message across in “Heartbeat”. Richardson uses the same two techniques of changing perspectives through different indentations and writing in consistent metaphors that connect children and birth to the natural world in her poem “Aquarius” in order to demonstrate how childbirth is an intrinsic part of nature. Richardson changes perspectives in this poem through different indentations: paragraphs indented to the left are from the perspective of the baby, and paragraphs indented to the right are from the perspective of the mother. Richardson is thus able to switch perspectives rapidly from “her body, which envelops,” as the child talking about the mother, to “I love my husband,” from the perspective of the mother (Aquarius). She further connects “Aquarius” to childbirth through consistent metaphors relating to the sea and to trees, both of which are base parts of nature. One key phrase that demonstrates this technique is “a body. Lying in the hollow of a tree / waiting to be pushed out into the open, / into the other body, the sea” (Aquarius). By comparing the womb to the hollow of a tree waiting and the baby waiting for release into the world, or the sea, Richardson connects the simple act of childbirth to nature in a profound way. Richardson overall applies the use of swapping perspectives and nature metaphors to connect childbirth to the natural world. This is an incredibly important message since humanity on a whole has forgotten that it is a part of nature and shuns its connections to the outside world, but Richardson brings readers back to their long-forgotten roots by focusing on a minuscule yet influential part of life—birth.

Works Cited

Richardson, Rachel B. J. Hundred-Year Wave. Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2016.