Valentine Ackland

                I find most of Ackland’s poetry to be written in a much more traditional way than most of the other modernist poets. here use of rhyming and common ABBA, ABAB, AABB structure make her poetry seem less developed than the poets of more free verse. Her poem, “The Lonely Woman” is somewhat of a traditional poem with its two stanzas of four couplets each. The content probably reflects her emotions in a depressed state as it sounds like she was in much of her life, judging by her autobiography. The poem illustrates a woman living alone on a farm, which can probably be related to by many people who live alone. The Newspaper is important as a way of coping with the fact of being alone, in a way that she seeks some kind of social interaction even if it is only by reading about others.  The fact that she is lonely but has no trouble going to bed shows that she has been like this for a while, and while many may not feel bad, it is written so that by the end of the poem, you feel sorry for the old woman, and begin to think about the lonely people that you happen to know and how they might be feeling.