Early in The Morning: A Collection of New Poems - Content of Poems in Collection

Content of Poems in Collection

The poetry in this collection spans several topics from religion and war to animals and nature. A common theme is the reversal of roles and norms. Causley takes traditional tropes and upsets expectations such as in "Early in the Morning" which begins peacefully (birds singing) but ends with unexpectedly violent imagery (explosion). Unlike his contemporaries Causley challenged the subject matter rather than the style of children's poetry. As a result he paired traditionally recognizable forms with surprising reversals of content. "There was an Old Woman" begins with an allusion to a common nursery rhyme yet after establishing expectations it fails to conform to them. Causley addresses this reversal of expectations in "The Owl Looked out of the Ivy Bush" where the owl speaks backwards, or "My Cat Plumduff" who chooses to sit in a tree even when onlookers accuse him of wrongly thinking he's a bird. In a period that avoided religion in poetry Causley included it matter-of-factly. "Rebekah" is written about the wife of Isaac, and is followed shortly by a poem about "John, John the Baptist". Notably, this collection concludes with "I Am the Song", about God. Some students suggest the thematic progression from war through chaos to God in this particular collection is significant.