For The Fire Poem Analysis

The immense power of a text is gained through the distinctive ideas portrayed within. John Foulcher, Australian poet and teacher, outlines his observations of the environment surrounding him and the conflict within it through his poetry. These poems include ideas such as the brutality in nature trumping its beauty, as represented in the poems For the Fire and Loch Ard Gorge. As well as how observing nature's savagery can give insight into human mortality, as is prominently expressed in Loch Ard Gorge, and lastly the mundanity and complexity of society compared to the simplistic divinity of the natural world as displayed in Summer Rain. The distinctive ideas portrayed in these texts create powerful meaning and affect those reading them, allowing

Loch Ard Gorge presents a persona walking along a precipice and observing what is around him. Foulcher forces responders to examine their own mortality and insignificance within the natural world with the line “hammocks of bone and meat, lugged from the sea and dumped in the soil,” this brutal visual imagery portrays how weak and defenceless humans are when compared to the force of nature and the actuality of how mortal we are in this life. This creates a sense of angst for readers, as they are made to examine the temporality of life, and how quickly it can be lost. Likewise, Foulcher uses metaphor with “sheep and cattle surround the place, kicking tufts of unconcern,” to show the indifference of nature towards human suffering and our irrelevance towards the natural world, such as the human lives lost through the shipwreck demonstrated in Loch Ard Gorge “a century ago, there was a shipwreck here. Its gravestones hump the grass.” These lives are dehumanised and therefore desensitised, to show further effects of the insignificance of the human life as seen through the eyes of the natural environment. The savagery of nature can outweigh human mortality and this can be seen through examining the natural

Foulcher’s Summer Rain represents a juxtaposed view of suburbia towards the natural environment throughout his poem, as he explains societies daily repetitive tasks. This idea is expressed through Foulcher’s use of simile, in the stanza “steam rising from ovens and showers like mist across a swampland.” This simile makes the comparison between average tasks completed in the urban world, such as cooking or showering to a natural situation such as a swampland, creating a feeling of bother and discomfort for the readers, as swamplands are generally humid, insect ridden and muddy. This effectively makes the readers feel this way, not of the swamplands that are compared, but of the tasks in the home that are conveyed. Similarly, Foulcher uses simile in “clutter on the highway like abacus beads. No one dares overtake,” to illustrate the lack of free will in society as abacus beads are on a set path, there is no freedom or individuality. This demonstrates how where everything is busy and cramped, there is no room in society to notice the small simplistic divinities in the natural world around them. The complexity and mundanity of society causes the simplistic beauties of nature to be