Driving Through Sawmill Towns Poem Essay
Poetry is the best literary medium within which to convey emotions, feelings and thoughts. Two Australian poems written by widely appreciated poets are Driving Through Sawmill Towns by Les Murray and Small Town Dance by Judith Wright. Not only do these texts speak economically about the theme of shrivelling sad country towns but they make it more of an acceptable phenomenon by expressing it through the use of poetic devices in such a way that it is more acceptable.
In Murrays poem, his persona speaks from the perspective of a driver of a car traveling through a rural town. The poets highly selective diction such as ‘glide’ and ‘speed away through the upland’ make it transparently clear the travellers, quiet often elite people have little care …show more content…
This is most likely deliberate as this town is one of thousands in which people are simply existing, not living. Poetic devices employed in this text encourages the readers to feel empathy and sorrow for the inhabitants of the town. Unfortunately, there is no sign of optimism in the poem. The readers are left feeling heavy-hearted by the fact that women will still be looking over the hills for a city. Additionally, women will still be involved in monotonous, boring and tedious chores. They are only involved in conversations at night and the one other significant activity to occur is watching the light go out. The dull tone of the poem is magnified by crickets being the only knowledge of summer and the sound of rain gurgling in the down pipes in winter. Murrays vivid imagery allows the reader to ‘feel’, ‘hear’ and ‘see’ what is happening to the town rather than what is not. From a cultural point of view, Murray feels despair for the small towns from which big companies have vacated.
Judith Wrights poem, Small Town Dance, delineates the narrow and circumscribes lives that women in rural areas, suffer. The entire structure of this text uses the tedious folding of a sheet as a parallel to a square dance: ‘arms wide: together: again: two forward steps: hands meet/your partners once and twice’. Furthermore, the punctuation involves deliberate pauses so that readers understand how monotonous and repetitive women’s work
In Murrays poem, his persona speaks from the perspective of a driver of a car traveling through a rural town. The poets highly selective diction such as ‘glide’ and ‘speed away through the upland’ make it transparently clear the travellers, quiet often elite people have little care …show more content…
This is most likely deliberate as this town is one of thousands in which people are simply existing, not living. Poetic devices employed in this text encourages the readers to feel empathy and sorrow for the inhabitants of the town. Unfortunately, there is no sign of optimism in the poem. The readers are left feeling heavy-hearted by the fact that women will still be looking over the hills for a city. Additionally, women will still be involved in monotonous, boring and tedious chores. They are only involved in conversations at night and the one other significant activity to occur is watching the light go out. The dull tone of the poem is magnified by crickets being the only knowledge of summer and the sound of rain gurgling in the down pipes in winter. Murrays vivid imagery allows the reader to ‘feel’, ‘hear’ and ‘see’ what is happening to the town rather than what is not. From a cultural point of view, Murray feels despair for the small towns from which big companies have vacated.
Judith Wrights poem, Small Town Dance, delineates the narrow and circumscribes lives that women in rural areas, suffer. The entire structure of this text uses the tedious folding of a sheet as a parallel to a square dance: ‘arms wide: together: again: two forward steps: hands meet/your partners once and twice’. Furthermore, the punctuation involves deliberate pauses so that readers understand how monotonous and repetitive women’s work