In the Park Literary Elements

third-person limited speaker

three stanzas (two quatrains and a final sestet), iambic meter.

"a small balloon" (Line 8).
The small balloon is a metaphor for the lover's thoughts, as imagined by the woman.

"the grace of God…” (Line 8).
repetition of "G" sound

The woman ironically claims that it is "so sweet / to hear [the children's] chatter" (Line 11) after listening to the children "whine and bicker" (Line 2).

There is an ironic resonance between the woman "nursing / the youngest child" (Lines 12-13) and stating that her children have "eaten [her] alive" (Line 14).

Sonnet

A park

resigned, pensive, bitter

The protagonist of the poem is a woman of young children, coping with motherhood. The antagonist is the social pressures that force women to hide their struggles with motherhood.

The major conflict in the poem is between the woman's internal suffering as she copes with the demands of motherhood, and the external pressures (represented by her lover) to maintain the illusion that motherhood is always enjoyable and simple.

The climax of the poem occurs in the final line, when the mother explicitly reveals that she was "feigning" her satisfaction with motherhood to her lover by stating that her children have "eaten [her] alive."

The woman's "out of date" clothes and bickering children foreshadow the exhaustion and dissatisfaction that she expresses in the final stanza.

The conversation between the woman and her former lover is an example of understatement. Both characters speak in cliches and the conversation is abbreviated by simply stating "et cetera." This understates the depth of the woman's emotional pain and any of the lover's emotions, concealing them beneath understated small talk.

"but for the grace of God..." (Line 8)

This alludes to the idiom "There but for the grace of God go I," which indicates pity for someone that the speaker is observing.

"They have eaten me alive." (Line 14)

Harwood has stated that this line is an allusion to the eucharist, a Christian rite in which Christians consume bread and wine as the body and blood of Christ (Sheridan 146).

The lover's "departing smile" is a metonymy for the lover walking away (Line 12).

"To the wind she says," (Line 14).

The wind is personified as a listener.

"From his neat head unquestionably rises" (Line 7).

This line contains a hyperbole because the limited third-person narrator does not know the lover's actual thoughts; the woman is assuming that the man is pitying her, but claims that he "unquestionably" thinks pitying thoughts.

"whine" (Line 2)
"chatter" (Line 11)