Kenneth Slessor was born at orange, N.S.W., in 1901, and educated in Sydney. He worked as a journalist on the staffs of several Sydney and Melbourne newspapers, becoming eventually editor of the paper Smith's Weekly. During the Second World War he accompanied the troops in Greece, North Africa and New Guinea as official war correspondent. In 1956 he became editor of the periodical Southerly. With the notable exception of `Beach Burial', Slessor wrote very little after 1944, the date of publication of a collection of his poetry entitled One Hundred Poems. Philip Lindsay, in his autobiographical book I'd Live the Same Life Over, tells about the circumstances of Joe Lynch's death, in somewhat more detail than does Slessor in his elegy: `Joe was a giant, lean and powerful, with red upstanding hair, and the most amiable of grins; but once he had fallen down, a habit he had when very drunk, he would lie contentedly on his back with a gentle smile and grin up at you while you tugged at shoulders, arms, and legs, and he softly explained that the whole police force with an elephant to help couldn't shift him an inch; and I'm afraid he was right. `A splendid fellow, Joe ...was to disappear from life magnificently...Loaded with bottles, he had been off to some North Shore party...when, tiring of the slow progress of the ferry - or, perhaps, of life itself - he had sprung up, saying that he'd swim there quicker, and, fully dressed, dived overboard. A deckhand had leaped in after him, and life-belts had been thrown. They saw Joe...wave cheerily and strike out for Milson's Point; then he vanished in the moonlight. Perhaps a shark got him, or a mermaid - as some said - or the load of bottles in his greasy old rain-coat tugged him to ... ... middle of paper ... ...he imagery of the more intensely-felt passages in the middle of the poem. Perhaps the poet is like someone at their journey's end, `all passion spent', recollecting in tranquillity some intimations of mortality? Finally, although it might be argued that many of the images in the poem have individual inspiration, it would seem that, by deriving the most important (almost symbolic) imagery - the beginning and end from the scene of the Harbour - Slessor has given a discernible unity of concept and mood to his poem, and created a work which is both validly Australian in derivation, and at the same time universal in its implication. BIBLIOGRAPHY Lindsay, P., I'd Live the Same Life Over (London: Hutchinson, 1941) Slessor, Kenneth, One Hundred Poems (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1944) Wilkes, G.A., Commonwealth Literary Fund Lectures, 1957. [2300 words]
The poem begins with many examples of imagery and reveals an important role of the meaning of the poem. In the first four lines of the poem, Jeffers uses imagery to establish his connection between him and the bay.
The personal and cultural context of an era shapes the thoughts and thus the work of the poets of the time. Kenneth Slessor was a famous Australian poet and journalist. Born in 1901 in Orange, New South Wales, he was appointed war correspondent for a period of four years in World War 2. This meant that he was exposed to certain situations and events which, by their very nature, compelled him to contemplate both death and the meaning of human existence. This heavily impacted his writing and is evident throughout two of his most famous poems. These are Beach Burial and Five Bells. In both, he deeply questions both the meaning of life and the idea of death being unsurpassable. Kenneth Slessor rates death as having great power. Such a fact is demonstrated throughout his poetry. The power of death is explored and meaning of human existence is questioned.
This poem dwells heavily on the problems in war. It describes how high the death toll is for both sides. Slessor uses “convoys of dead sailors” to show that all these dead body’s are very much alike, with their movements and feelings being the same. It also outlines a major problem in war, being able to identify and bury they dead properly. "And each cross, the driven stake of tide-wood, bears the last signature of m...
Despite the beauty described in the first few stanzas of the poem, it was the feeling of doubt and pondering that approached at the end of the poem that truly was the most thought provoking. Instead of just writing of beauty, Poets must realize that they may be leading people to false ideals, and in doing so that they may actually be causing individuals to believe in something that is nothing more than a dream. This realization makes the image of the questioning poet by far the most important in the piece.
Edgar Allan Poe is one of the best nineteenth century correspondents. Who has composed a lot of poems for the most part reflecting his life, for example, The Raven, and Annabel, yet the poem The Bells does not portray his life but instead that this was a course of events of somebody 's life, being described by the ruler of the Ghouls . Poe 's plot is to distinctively portray the four particular focuses on an individual 's life. He does this by using the different repetition of bells and providing them with some human characteristics. Every individual sound of the bells expresses certain mind-sets to match with what they mean; from being born, to getting married, to getting sick and lastly to death. All portrayals were unique in their implications
The essays used in this book have been chosen by Harold Bloom, being that they are still by different essayists than the last two sources mentioned and considering Bloom is not one of them, it is still not bias. This source shed some light on the context of the two poems that were analyzed, but minimal observations on the poem itself and its correlation to the themes. Given this, there was only bare to little use of this secondary source.
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.
The first stanza describes the depth of despair that the speaker is feeling, without further explanation on its causes. The short length of the lines add a sense of incompleteness and hesitance the speaker feels towards his/ her emotions. This is successful in sparking the interest of the readers, as it makes the readers wonder about the events that lead to these emotions. The second and third stanza describe the agony the speaker is in, and the long lines work to add a sense of longing and the outpouring emotion the speaker is struggling with. The last stanza, again structured with short lines, finally reveals the speaker 's innermost desire to "make love" to the person the speaker is in love
The speaker begins the poem an ethereal tone masking the violent nature of her subject matter. The poem is set in the Elysian Fields, a paradise where the souls of the heroic and virtuous were sent (cite). Through her use of the words “dreamed”, “sweet women”, “blossoms” and
In the end of the narrator’s consciousness, the tone of the poem shifted from a hopeless bleak
In the end, the journey the speaker embarked on throughout the poem was one of learning, especially as the reader was taken through the evolution of the speakers thoughts, demonstrated by the tone, and experienced the images that were seen in the speaker’s nightmare of the personified fear. As the journey commenced, the reader learned how the speaker dealt with the terrors and fears that were accompanied by some experience in the speaker’s life, and optimistically the reader learned just how they themselves deal with the consequences and troubles that are a result of the various situations they face in their
..., the content and form has self-deconstructed, resulting in a meaningless reduction/manifestation of repetition. The primary focus of the poem on the death and memory of a man has been sacrificed, leaving only the skeletal membrane of any sort of focus in the poem. The “Dirge” which initially was meant to reflect on the life of the individual has been completely abstracted. The “Dirge” the reader is left with at the end of the poem is one meant for anyone and no one. Just as the internal contradictions in Kenneth Fearing’s poem have eliminated the substantial significance of each isolated concern, the reader is left without not only a resolution, but any particular tangible meaning at all. The form and content of this poem have quite effectively established a powerful modernist statement, ironically contingent on the absence and not the presence of meaning in life.
For this assignment, I have decided to write about a famous poem of Billy Collins which is titled as ‘Introduction to Poetry’ written in 1996.
For Whom The Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway takes place during the Spanish Civil War, which devastated the nation of Spain from 1936 to 1939. The conflict started after an attempted coup d'état by a group of Spanish generals against the regime of the Second Spanish Republic, under the leadership of Manuel Azaña. The Nationalist coup was supported by the conservative Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right, Carlist monarchists, and the Fascist Falange. The events of the story center around Robert Jordan, an American volunteer for the Republican guerilla band. Jordan and the guerilla band attempt to defend Spain from the nationalist coup and preserve their way of life. However, the Republicans are unsuccessful because the Nationalists achieve victory, overthrow the government, and General Francisco Franco becomes dictator of Spain. The actions of people like Robert Jordan reveal that Spain was worth the overwhelming price to fight because the guerillas want to preserve and protect their ideals and way of life.
The musical words capture the reader as they pull him in with their rapid, lyrical flow.