Les Murray’s Sydney and the Bush embodies the poet’s personal connection and attachment to the ‘farmer lifestyle’ as he blames the disconnection of urban and rural Australia entirely on the city’s infatuation with materialistic pleasure. This consequently emphasises his value of the nature of rural society. Murray perceives the infatuation as an external attitude of the modernised and corrupted urban society, factored by the city individual’s internal values of luxury, wealth and power being the unmistakable cause of the cultural divide. He reinforces this notion through the technique of repetition, using the phrase ‘When Sydney’ in order to periodically mark the progression of cultural disconnection and accentuate the attributing internal and external factors. “When Sydney ordered lavish books, and warmed her feet with coal” reiterates the internal necessity for comfort and sophistication as few of limited sources of satisfaction. Les Murray further develops the concept of disconnection in the poem when “then bushman sank and factories rose, and warders set the tone”, contextualising this to reveal a loss of cultural identity for the rural community through industrialisation. “Then convicts bled and warders bred, the bush went back and back” whereby the poet suggests that nature is the central value of the farmer…
In the text “Late Ferry” Gray expresses his experiences with discovery when his understanding and perceptions on life alter. Gray portrays his view on life when he is observing different stages of the ferries leaving Sydney Harbour. The contrast of the yachts and the late ferry symbolises the simplicity and darkness of life. “Tomato stake patch of the yachts” metaphorically creates an image that the yachts are safely secured. This idea is juxtaposed to the “neon redness” in the water which conjures up ideas of danger. Gray takes the reader on a literal metaphorical journey where he discovers that life is much like the harbour where the yachts safely anchored and secure represent the innocence of life, but eventually we must venture out into the real world just like the ferry heading for the huge dark waters. By contrast, Amy’s understandings and perceptions change through discovering the value of her native and commits to learn the language which is a privilege she had previously denied her grandfather. This is shown when she uses a naïve tone “I don’t think my grandfather understood much English” at the beginning of the text but later her tone is full of a sense of regret and respects her grandfather when she confesses “I’d denied my grandfather the commonest of kindness”. This new area of study will not only renew perceptions and create new understandings but…
"They hear. They all hear the speaking of the tree. Today, the first and last of every tree speaks to humankind. Come to me, here beside the river. Plant yourself beside me, here beside the river," is another form of personification used by Angelou. The tree is also talking to the people, asking them to "plant" themselves beside it. It is saying that it is there to hold the person up, to be used at strength, something to lean against, in order to fight away all the hatred in the world. It is there for the person if they…
The poem "Island Man" is about and for, "a Caribbean man in London who still wakes up to the sound of the sea". The First line is one word, "Morning". This emphasises the word "morning". It makes it seem important, which it is, because it is the main theme in this poem. When you hear the poem, you may also hear "Mourning". This gives the idea that it is sad, there seems to be sorrow in mornings. Most people don't like mornings, they suggest work, tiredness. This is like the Island Man, he doesn't seem to like morning because he has to wake up and leave his dreams of an island.…
Maya Angelou is a stunning writer who has a way of capturing her readers to the core. In her poem “On The Pulse Of Morning” she uses a voice of renewal of hope for mankind. She used this poem in a speech that in the moment, introduced a former President of the United States. This poem was used to motivate a nation of hopeless and ungrateful people. Angelou's tone in this piece is one of power and love. She is very consistent in communicating the truth of peoples destruction and then the truth of how one can attain more if they choose it.…
The loneliness and isolation of the speaker’s ocean wanderings are emphasized in these lines. The speaker highlights the opposition between the comfortable landlubber and the anguished, lonely, frozen mariner. Alone physically and without a sense of connection to the rest of the human race, the seafarer pushes on in his suffering.…
The first line ‘morning’ puts the reader into the time when the poem is set. ‘Island man’ is used once at the start and once at the end to emphasize that he is still close to his birthplace. The language he uses presents images of sound and light. The ‘s’ and ‘sh’ sounds imagine the waves crashing against the shore and the overall peacefulness.‘blue’ and ‘emerald’ represents vibrant colours which evoke a tropical island. We can see how the poet tries to emphasize the beauty in the island by saying “the sun defiantly”, by using personification it lets us imagine how hot it might be, and how radiant the sun’s rays are. In the third stanza the author says, “comes back to sands/ of a grey metallic soar”, this is a metaphor that could be…
The poem also consists of an interesting use of symbolism that may suggest an underlying subject that is being addressed. In the poem, Smith may be trying to convey personal thoughts about abandonment to the audience. This can be referred to the fact that Smith herself had a difficult past with the passing of her mother in her early adult life and that her father had left his family behind to pursue a career in sailing (Booth, 2002). The poem seems to incorporate metaphors of an ocean and how a drowning person’s callings for help may be misinterpreted for joyous hand gestures of ‘waving’.…
In the poem ‘Train Journey’, the themes of Australian landscape and environment are portrayed with the use of personification and apostrophe to instil a sense of life in the landscape. This is displayed throughout the poem, where observations of Australian landscapes are seen from the position of the train. In the first stanza, the personification “out of the confused hammering dark of the train” highlights her difficulty of staying awake, proving that the majority of the poem is a dream.…
The speaker starts by stating that she “started Early – Took [her] Dog – / And visited the Sea –” providing setting for the rest of the poem, early morning by the seaside, until she comes to “[meet] the Solid Town –” which presents an extended setting of a seaside town (1-2, 21). Finally, the poet is seemingly writing about this experience as a way to exemplify her unity with nature, how truly difficult it is to remove herself from it, but also the necessity of her leaving.…
The poet personifies the line ‘sun surfacing defiantly’. This allows us to see the sun as a person rising every day in the Caribbean to shine brightly over everyone. This…
All great poets evoke emotional and intellectual responses from their readers. Judith Wright is one such poet as she uses a wide range of appropriate language and poetic techniques to challenge the responder with complex ideas, such as the inherent flaws in our nature and the folly of chasing total perfection in Eve to her Daughters, challenging the individual to question their role in a post-Edan world. The idea of finding our individual place in the world is again apparent in Remittance Man which despite its distinctly Australian feel evokes strong emotion in a wide range of audiences challenging them to think about whether or not it’s a person place in the world that truly defines who they are. In both poems Wright successfully engages the audience expressing her feelings about characters and issues, while it may seem Wright composes mainly for herself she has a powerful and sometimes slightly disturbing effect on the responder.…
The train ride in ‘Journey: The North Coast’ symbolises the persona’s personal embarkment to escape tedious fast paced city life and reengage with his inner beliefs. Gray illustrates the fast pace yet monotony of city life through the use of onomatopoeia of words ‘booms and cracks and tears the wind apart’. The use of strong verbs such as ‘swing out’ and ‘rattle up the sash’ to express the initial anxiety of shifting from one place or state of mind to another. As the train ride progresses the persona’s internal quest does also. The natural imagery of ‘flees on the blue and silver paddocks’ contrasts sharply with the dissonance of the onomatopoeia expressed at the start of the poem. This brings a sense of relief, which is reinforced through the use of first person. The use of first person in the phrase ‘I rise into the mirror, rested’ shows us how this personal quest has changed his belief from being unengaged with himself and the world around him to engaging with his true state of mind. Through the combination of these language techniques we begin to see the persona challenging his original beliefs and again engaging with himself and life around him.…
In the first stanza the speaker sees “the bright beaches: blue mist” (line 2) …. He looks out at “The fishermen’s houses… shores…” (line 4) and listens to the “sound of the sea…[as] life heaved and breathed.. with the strength of that turbulent soil” (lines 2 – 6). The language creates images of picturesque landscapes, glistening sunlight and blue seas. He personifies the earth with the phrase “life heaved and breathed.. the turbulent soil” (lines 5, 6) bringing it to life under one’s feet. In this place, he seems at one with the sea, as he possessed its energy and vitality, almost as though the island has a beating heart within it.…
Sarojini Naidu begins the poem, The Coromandel Fishers in a positive note of hope. She calls the fishermen as ‘Brothers’ and asks them to ‘rise’ as the wakening skies are praying to the morning sunlight that has just started illuminating the skies. The wind that had blown hard all night has also become calm now and so she calls them to gather their nets, set their catamarans free and move to capture the wealth of the sea. This is their right, for they are the kings of the sea.…