Donald Bruce Dawe (AO) was a one of the most influential Australian poets of all time whom challenged readers with his strong moralistic messages throughout his work. During Dawe’s childhood, he moved throughout Melbourne while his father sought employment. He worked as a postman, lecturer, teacher, and was enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force, all as well as being a successful writer and poet. His life experiences are prevalent in his writing, where his moralistic and powerful views encourage deep interpretation and reevaluation. Dawe’s poem “Enter Without So Much As Knocking” challenges the themes of materialism and consumerism in a cynical manner. The piece draws focus to society’s conformity to such things, and our ideas as to what is important. “Drifters,” another of Dawe’s works, focuses on transience of life, looking at a family who constantly move around and struggle with the uncertainty of their future. “The Raped Girl’s Father,” one of Dawe’s stronger poems, powerfully argues society’s view of rape and specifically rape victims. The piece draws attention to the vulnerability that victims have as a result of judgment from those around them.
Dawe’s piece, “Enter Without So Much As Knocking” tests materialism and conformity within society. The entire piece is written like a television commercial with a commentator pitching every part of life with reference to Bobby Dazzler on Channel 7. The descriptions – ‘well-equipped’, ‘smoothly-run’, and ‘economy-size’ – generally used on sales products, are used for the character’s household and family. The manner in which his siblings are said to have come off the ‘department rack’ pushes the materialistic theme further, and challenges what humans in society see as important b...
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...in poetry and conveyed strong ideas to spark reevaluation towards situations that society faces each day. His poem, “Enter Without So Much As Knocking” challenged our conformity to materialism, and the prominence of such themes in popular culture. “Drifters” was another piece that told a story but allowed the opportunity for deeper evaluation. It questioned human’s ability to make sacrifices for the happiness of those around us, focusing on transience, stability and the hope for such things. “The Raped Girl’s Father” took a much deeper approach, and powerfully questioned the manner in which we judge rape victims in popular culture. It concentrated on the aftermath, rather than the rape itself and was written in a manner that could be related to society. Dawe created visionary works that allowed readers to re-assess their opinions and their approach to everyday life.
‘Enter Without So Much As Knocking’ by an ex-Vietnam veteran Bruce Dawe was published in 1959 and can be found in his Sometimes Gladness: Collected Poems 1954-1992. ‘Enter Without So Much As Knocking’ shows how consumerism has a negative effect on society. The poem portrays the life of a typical man who is living in the suburbs. It begins with the birth of a child. As the baby begins to observe the world he has been brought into, he sees instructions, signs and expectation. Dawe stresses the point of the first thing that the baby heard, a voice of consumerism on television opposed to a loving and comfortable family. The baby has been brought into a materialistic world, a world where such a significant event has just taken place, a new member to the family has been born yet the television is on and Bobby Dazzler is speaking his fakeness to the household.
The notions of the Australian voice as multifaceted and diverse, is insightfully expressed in Tim Winton's short story anthology The turning and the Drover's wife by Henry Lawson. Australian voice in literature often explores the quality inherent to the Australian identity of overcoming hardships. The stories Fog, On her knees, and The Drover's wife explore these hardships through the notions of mateship,and the importance of family in facing these challenges.
Bruce Dawe the common people’s poet has been influenced by a diverse range of experiences contributing to his wide range of subject matter. Dawe’s interests are quite eclectic yet his poetic “home base” is his interest in the lives of ordinary Australians, the experiences they go through and topics affecting them. Thus most of his poems are easily read by everyday Australians due to the simple yet effective vocabulary. Some of these topics include poems about suburbia, loneliness, old age and sport. Bruce Dawe is also strongly pacifist with his feelings on war most strongly pronounced in the poem “Homecoming”. Dawe’s interest in society is most likely due to his experience of being born into a lower class family his father having the menial job of a labourer. He also left school early having to do many menial jobs. Dawe’s poetry strongly focuses on the experiences of everyday working class Australians and thus his target audience is vast.
"Bones, she was diced-bones rolled on black." The Raped Girl's Father is a disturbing poem about a girl who is "unluckily" raped, and how this brings incredible anger and shame to her father. Written by Bruce Dawe, it contains an inept use of thought, feeling and language. It is an absorbing evocation of the girl's feelings and her horrendous suffering, and how her identity has changed as a consequence of the rape -for herself, her father and society.
The struggles that many face while experiencing poverty are not like any other. When a person is experiencing poverty, they deal with unbearable hardships as well as numerous tragic events. Diane Gilliam Fisher’s collection of poems teaches readers about labor battles within West Virginian territories, at the beginning of the twentieth century. Some of these battles include the Battle of Matewan and Battle of Blair Mountain. The collection of poems is presented in many different manners, ranging from diary entries to letters to journal entries. These various structures of writing introduce the reader to contrasting images and concepts in an artistic fashion. The reader is able to witness firsthand the hardships and the light and dark times of impoverished people’s lives. He or she also learns about the effects of birth and death on poverty stricken communities. In the collection of poems in Kettle Bottom, Fisher uses imagery and concepts to convey contrast between the positive and negative aspects of the lives of people living in poverty.
The ways in which Wilfred Owen’s Disabled and Maya Angelou’s Still I Rise present the overcoming of burdens are very intriguing. Each character possesses a burden that stands in their way, holding them back in life. In Disabled, the individual’s burden is the disability, trauma, and loss afflicted onto him by war and in Still I Rise racism, stereotypes, and a rough history endured by africans is Angelou’s burden. Though the authors experience very different problems and portray opposite atmospheres they contain similarities and use many of the same devices such as symbolism and juxtaposed antithesis points to deliver their messages.
At first, the narrator conforms to the uneventful and dull capitalist society. He fines success in his work at an automobile manufacture, has obtained a large portion of his Ikea catalog, and has an expansive wardrobe. He is defined by his possessions and has no identity outside his furniture, which he remarks, “I wasn’t the only slave of my nesting instincts” (Palahniuk, 43) and “I am stupid, and all I do is want and need things.” (Palahniuk, 146) For the narrator, there is no fine line between the consumer [narrator] and the product. His life at the moment is a cycle of earning a wage, purchasing products, and representing himself through his purchases. “When objects and persons exist as equivalent to the same system, one loses the idea of other, and with it, any conception of self or privacy.” (Article, 2) The narrator loses sight of his own identity; he has all these material goods, but lacks the qu...
...derstand what they are and are going through. If the reader belongs to another minority or is a new emigrant to Australia will identify itself with the anger and frustration other readers might feel guilty just because they thing they belong to a privileged group. I felt the injustice of inequality that emerges form this poem collection and the uselessness. There were no suggestions how repair what was done . The author shows in the poem that the hurt and anger are part of the aboriginal identity.
The poem “We’re not trucking around” (2003) by Samuel Wagan Watson presents the important idea about the marginalization of Aboriginal culture and the idea that Aboriginals do not try to mimic the ‘Invaders’. These ideas represent an aboriginal perspective on Australian national identity which explores the marginalization of aboriginal culture and the mistreatment of Aboriginals in Australia. Watson reinforces his arguments with poetic techniques including the creation of an atmosphere, use of dialect and empathy. The composer uses roads and, in particular, trucks as examples of his ideas.
Poetry has been used for centuries as a means to explore emotions and complex ideas through language, though individuals express similar ideas in wholly different forms. One such idea that has been explored through poetry in numerous ways is that of war and the associated loss, grief, and suffering. Two noted Australian poets shown to have accomplished this are Kenneth Slessor with his work ‘Beach Burial’ and John Schumann’s ‘I Was Only Nineteen’. Both of these works examine the complexities of conflict, but with somewhat different attitudes.
With the stereotypes and myths that are seen throughout the areas, we are able to see how things make a difference when it comes to how things are portrayed. Victims of rape should not blame themselves or see the situation as a joke, which is proven in Patricia Lockwood’s poem, “Rape Joke”. She uses a very unique style of a story-like poem to tell a story of an instance that could happen and how to see the situation afterwards. There is the aftermath of how victims feel and act after going through the traumatic experience of a rape. Lockwood is able to portray that experience in detail in her poem “Rape Joke.”
One of Emily Dickinson’s greatest skills is taking the familiar and making it unfamiliar. In this sense, she reshapes how her readers view her subjects and the meaning that they have in the world. She also has the ability to assign a word to abstractness, making her poems seemingly vague and unclear on the surface. Her poems are so carefully crafted that each word can be dissected and the reader is able to uncover intense meanings and images. Often focusing on more gothic themes, Dickinson shows an appreciation for the natural world in a handful of poems. Although Dickinson’s poem #1489 seems disoriented, it produces a parallelism of experience between the speaker and the audience that encompasses the abstractness and unexpectedness of an event.
Etheridge Knight’s “Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminal Insane” is an interesting poem spurred from his own experiences, that explores a variety of things from basic human emotions to controversial medical treatments. Knight was incarcerated for 8 years for robbery, during which he began to develop his skill as a poet, and this stint in prison influenced the settings and styles of his poetry. Knight’s poem is unique in its slang-styled diction, but brings about relatable concepts to allow the reader to connect with the text. Two prominent themes within the poem are that anyone, no matter how strong or looked up to, can be broken, and also that slavery is still alive today, even if it is not in its traditional form. Knight combines these themes with deeper meanings and an individual way of writing to create a poem that is compelling and classic.
Many times poetry is reflective of the author’s past as well as their personal struggles. One struggle that poets write about is of identity and the creation, as well as loss, of individual identities. Using a passage from the essay Lava Cameo by Eavan Boland, I will show how two poets use their craft to describe their struggle with identity. Eavan Boland and Seamus Heaney both write poems which express an internal struggle with roles of identity and how they recreate their roles to fit their needs. Through retrospection and reflection, both poets come to realize that the roles they led as well as those they reinvented have created their own personal identities. Boland, in her essay Lava Cameo, touches on several emotions (loss, despair, etc) and episodes in her life which capture the essence of her identity. It is this notion of individual identity that is a central theme throughout Boland’s essay and some of her poems. Boland, through retrospection and hindsight, has been able to recognize the roles that society has dictated that she follow. These roles were not necessarily created for any rational reason (ex: female role as subordinate and even as marital property). One passage in particular captures the internal struggles Boland has endured. This passage runs from pages 27 to 29 in Boland’s Object Lessons. It begins by saying, "It may not be that women poets of another generation…" and ends with "…but because of poetry."
Given these points, Angelou’s widely use of devices, sentence length, and tenses allows the reader to capture the theme of her poem Men. Angelou shows how women are somewhat treated then and now. She lets the reader know that even after a man may have hurt a woman, a woman still would have a desire to go back to them because we are curious to know of them. She presents the idea that women are oppressed to men – women like Angelou who have had bad experiences with them. Overall, Angelou’s poem is like a story that presents men as head honcho over women and the affect that they bring upon