There is a girl inside

There is a girl inside.

She is randy as a wolf.

She will not walk away

and leave these bones

to an old woman.

She is a green tree

 in a forest of kindling.

She is a green girl

in a used poet.

She has waited patient as a nun

for the second coming,

when she can break through gray hairs

into blossom

and her lovers will harvest

honey and thyme

and the woods will be wild

with the damn wonder of it.

    The opening line “there is a girl inside” and the final two lines of the first stanza, which refer to the “bone” of “ an old woman”, tell us immediately the speaker is an old woman who still feels young and vital inside. So we know the central tension in the poem is probably the tension between youth and age, between what the speak feels like inside and what she looks like outside. And indeed, we can see that this tension structures the whole poem as a whole through the alternation of the language of youthful vitality: girl, randy, green, tree, green girl, blossom, with the language of decay: bones, old woman, kindling, used poet, gray hairs. In addition, the narrative dimension of the poem, or the “story” the poem tells, reveals an old woman dreaming about the miraculous rejuvenation, the “second coming” of youth, that she feels awaits “the girl inside” herself, the girl that she is still, despite “those bones” and “gray hairs”. Thus we might hypothesize that the theme of the poem probably involves the paradox of timeless youth. To discover the specific nature of the theme, and to understand how the poem establishes it, we need to closely examine the formal elements of the poem.

The first thing we might notice, looking at the poem as a whole, is that the alteration of images of youth with images of age ends with the fourth line of the third stanza. The final stanza consists of images of youth, fertility, and they evoke the youthfulness the speaker believes can overpower age: blossom, lovers, harvest, honey, and thyme, woods, wild and wonder.

       This emphasis if triumph of youth over age can also be seen in the decrease in punctuation as the poem progresses, which is literally a decrease in stops and pauses. There are a total of five periods in the first two stanzas, but there is only one comma in the third and no punctuation at all in the final stanza until we get to the period that ends the poem. This dramatic decrease in punctuation suggests acceleration, excitement, and power, thus reinforcing the emphasis on the triumph of youth in the final stanza.

       Then let us see what the use of verbs can tell us about the theme of the poem. The speaker’s use of powerful verbs in the active voice: the girl inside “will not walk away”, she “can break through”, and “her lovers will harvest”. These powerful, active verbs reinforce the idea that this girl is powerful and active, strong enough to get what she wants. The use of “has waited” in the third stanza reinforce the idea that this girl inside is ready to emerge, as her waiting is over or should be over soon. Then “she is randy as a wolf” also suggests the powerfulness of the girl inside, for a wolf is a powerful animal that fights for what it wants and usually gets what it fight for.

       There are other images associated with the girl inside that contribute to the theme of timeless youth. The metaphor “she is a green tree” invokes the growing season, spring and summer, the season of rebirth and plentitude. So “green tree” carries with it the inevitability of rejuvenation. The tree that has been a mere skeleton all winter, like the old woman’s “bone”, and as dead looking as “kindling”, has blossomed. The rejuvenating power of the “green tree” inside the winter tree is thus linked to the rejuvenating of the “green girl” two lines down. If the “green tree” can break through…/into blossom”, then so can the green girl who waits inside the old woman.

       The “green girl” also implies that the girl is inexperienced, naïve, unused to the world. And this aspect of the image fits nicely with the similar in the second line of the neat stanza: “patient as a nun.” Nun takes a vow of chastity, poverty, and obedience, which means, in short, that they renounce the material world, the world of flesh. The images of the nun thus forms a bridge between the inexperienced girl and the old woman, for all three are  cut off, in one way or another, from the world of flesh. And just as the nun waits patiently for the her reward—the second coming of Christ—so the woman and the girl inside have both waited patiently for theirs: the second coming of youth.

    The closing lines in the final stanza have especially rich images. As we mentioned earlier, in the final stanza youth triumphs over age, and indeed it does. However, the words “harvest” , “honey” and “thyme” have an ambiguity that also reinforces the bond between youth and age. For in addition to their connotations of youthful sexual vitality, “harvest” “honey” and “thyme” can refer to activities associated wit autumn and therefore with the old woman. Metaphorically, the stanza implies a merger of age and youth. Similarly the word “kindling” in the second stanza has such an ambiguity. As noted earlier, “kindling” refers to old, dry up sticks used to start fires. But the very fact that kindling catches fire so easily associates it with the quality of passion, which also “catch fire” easily. In this sense, we might say that, in passion, youth an age are one.

    Thus we can formulate the theme of the poem as universally important: youth springs eternal in the human breast. For the poem suggests that age brings with it a special “harvest” of its own, which is the capacity to appreciate the gifts of youth that remains within us as seeds remain in the ripened fruit and, as a result, to feel young even when we are old. Thus the theme of the poem resolves the tension between the youth and age that structures it. And we can conclude that the poem has an organic unity because, as we have seen, its theme is carried by all its formal elements; that is, its form and content are inseparable. Furthermore, although the poem appears to be simple, our analysis of its organic unity reveals a surprising complexity in the operation of its formal elements. We would be justified in arguing, that from a new critical perspective, “There Is a Girl Inside” is a finely wrought literary text, a unified, complex art object, the theme of which has universal human significance.