Bruce Dawe Materialism

However, Dawe believed the desire was unwarranted and that humans were falling into meaningless, clinical procedures in life, blind to the simple pleasures. Dawe, therefore, exaggerates this regulated world to draw emphasis to this issue. In the third stanza as an adolescent, the continuous signs society consumes are described using short sentences in capital letters; 'WALK. DON'T WALK. TURN LEFT…KEEP CLEAR/OUT/OFF GRASS. NO BREATHING EXCEPT BY ORDER. BEWARE OF THIS. BEWARE OF THAT.' These commands begin as realistic and reasonable to a human, however, Dawe begins to satirically overstress these ideas. Dawe intends to describe the excess rules that society abides by. 'NO BREATHING EXCEPT BY ORDER' on one of the signs was obviously not an actual sign, however, this hyperbole emphasizes how far away society is from the rationale that Dawe believes in. The use of satire inspires the reader to become more aware and question consumerist

The author uses tone and images throughout to compare and contrast the concepts of “black wealth” and a “hard life”. The author combines the use of images with blunt word combinations to make her point; for example, “you always remember things like living in Woodlawn with no inside toilet”. This image evokes the warmth of remembering a special community with the negative, have to use outdoor facilities. Another example of this combination of tone and imagery is “how good the water felt when you got your bath from one of those big tubs that folk in Chicago barbecue in”. Again the author’s positive memory is of feeling fresh after her bath combined with a negative, the fact that it was a barbecue drum.

The loss of Aboriginal ethnicity is also highlighted when the land asks “Where are the laws and legends I gave?” This dates back to the Aboriginal culture, as their spirituality is inextricably linked to the land. They believe everything on the vast landscape has meaning and purpose. As long as they look after the land, the land will thereby return the favour. However, through time, Aboriginals have begun shifting away from their original beliefs as their world collides with the Western world. Different meanings could be made out of this; such as the more Aboriginals walk away from their culture, the less inclined the land will be to look after them, thus breaking the chain of their spirituality and beliefs. Caesuras such as full stops and question marks are used are pauses for a moment of reflection. Through the reader’s understanding of the poem’s structure, they are able to not only understand how the poem is to be read but also get the feel and emotions coming across from the poet.

Dawe arouses our senses in the third and fourth stanza by stating through the use of olfactory and auditory imagery, ‘somebody’s rubbish/burning, hearing vaguely, hearing a dog, a kid, and whisper of traffic.’ However, in the movie Darryl doesn’t confide completely in his poolroom and the prized possessions that are located within it, he has a loving family in which he can solve his problems with and can share his emotions, he is more advantaged than the man Dawe describes in his poem as he has living individuals who can give him words of support and people who can give him the exact amount of emotional connection to him that he has towards his poolroom. Whenever Darryl states, “this is going straight to the poolroom” he says it with much pride which helped shaped my general understanding of the Australian identity being so emotionally invested in inanimate objects rather than their loved ones but also Dawe helped me create a sense of understanding towards people who choose to live their lives devoted to something else rather than a

Bruce Dawe uses expressive language features to show the harshness of his poem. Dawe uses a variety of descriptive words to express his opinion,

In a series of verse paragraphs, Dawe focuses on the 1950’s society with an emphasis on the consumerism, materialism and lack of individualism. He seeks to convince an important issue in the Australian Society-Our consumer driven culture; a culture that defines us through what we buy and consume. The focus of Dawe’s criticism of the consumerism is the family that bought home the baby from the hospital. Dawe portrays it in a satirical way; the family life and the individual lives of the family members who have been dehumanized by such a mercantile society. He instills strong commands when describing his family commodities: “One economy-size Mum, One Anthony Squires-Coolstream-Summerweight Dad along with two other kids straight off the junior department rack.” The warmth of the mum, dad and kids, contrast with the advertising language which describes them. It is as if his mum is the size of a washing machine, the father is summed up by the suit he wears, and the baby siblings have been bought like goodies in an apartment place. Dawe is not saying that this is actually true; he is using metaphors and exaggeration.

against the standard poets to say the least, “I wanted to break the linearity of poetic text — to mess with it, if you will.” (poetryfoundation.org) He was not born into the wealthiest of families and found himself unable to pay for education, yet he has pushed boundaries for many

Bruce Dawes’ poetry highlights his concerns and devotion towards the ordinary consumer and how easily manipulated and rocked by the media they may be. He does this through the use of ironic humor, cliché, hyperbole and many other language features that are extensively used in his poetry.

In addition to this, the poem uses auditory imagery to shatter the dream-like atmosphere that has been created surrounding the suburb, with the “howl of the twin-cam war party” and the “techno pulse” destroying the tranquillity, and emanating the “invasion” of Australia by the Europeans over 200 years ago. This further works to evoke feelings of empathy from the reader by allowing them to observe “eye for an eye” philosophy, present throughout the poem, in phrases such as “areas we treat with the same contempt laid upon us”. These ideologies are present throughout Samuel Wagan Watson’s body of work, with many poems throughout the anthology displaying similar attitudes towards the colonisation of Australia, and the degradation of the spirituality of the land that followed.

Robert Gray is an Australian poet whose work is closely linked with nature. He grew up in the post ww11 era, and lives on the north coast. The poems ‘The Meatworks’, and ‘Flames and Dangling Wire’, express how he feels about life, his experiences and his beliefs. His poetry has such an enduring nature because it can be understood in so many different contexts, and includes universal themes which remain relevant to societies past, present and future.

Bruce Dawe, an Australian known poet, born 1930 is still one of the biggest selling and most highly regarded poets of Australia. His ability to write such influential poems has made an impact on a number of people, as each poem can be related to the ordinary living lives of Australians throughout the years. Bruce Dawe's poems are interesting because they comment on the lives of ordinary people. This statement is agreed on. In relation to the statement, three key poems can be linked being Enter Without So Much as Knocking (1959), Homo Suburbiensis (1964) and Drifters (1968).

On screen there is an example of this device in The Apology Day Breakfast. This device runs on a thought from one line to another without punctuation, this causes breaks of rhythm and effects the rate of reading. The effect of using this device is the creation of a sense of disconnect, as a constant theme running throughout both poems. Similarly, both poems have no consistent rhyming scheme and lack basic punctuation. The decision of both poets to employ an unstructured approach in terms of form and punctuation creates discomfort within the reader and challenges them to makes sense of what has been written. The use of primary sources as annotations in Heart’s Core Lament brings further depth and provides the reader an opportunity to consider the implications of white colonisation on Australia’s indigenous people.

It is often taught that to be persuasive, one must be clear and logical. In “The Wheelchair Butterfly,” James Tate takes a completely different approach; instead, he utilizes chaos to further his meaning and connect with a specific readership. Largely, it is Tate’s structure that reflects this chaos, and the meticulous arrangement of “The Wheelchair Butterfly” signifies that its setting and occurrences portray something more sinister than a bizarre and moderately grotesque town. Tate’s target readers for this elaborate, empathetically chaotic poem must be educated enough to be able to parse through his imagery, open to self-examination, and part of a society in a time of elevated social and political conflict. Thus, Tate gesticulates towards the hidden, systematic corruption common of societies with elevated social conflicts in a way that connects with the conflicted feelings his specific readership might feel towards this corruption in their own lives using elements of structure such as surreal imagery, enjambment, and simile. Using these elements, Tate attempts to relate to his readers by distracting them, creating a confusion versus clarity disparity, and transforming the nature of their concerns to make them softer and more acceptable. Because Tate’s target readers will attempt to decipher the poem’s hectic contents, these factors give readers an opportunity to examine themselves along with the poem. This highly empathetic and unconventional approach, similarly seen in Frank O’Hara’s “A Step Away From Them,” has its successes as well as its downfalls, mostly in terms of its range of readership. Though poems more explicit about their intentions, such as Lucille Clifton’s “[i am accused of tending to the past],” may be more accessible to a greater number of readers, some level of empathy is lost in their candor. The key difference between Tate and O’Hara’s poems versus Clifton’s poem, then, is a matter of being understood by a wide range of readers versus being compelling to a small group of readers. ?

Slessor is without doubt one of Australia’s great poets as his poetry invites us to feel and think about human experience in new ways. He shapes meaning in his poems through the use of sophisticated and appropriate language. Within the poem “Beach Burial” Slessor provides various insights on how the human condition is questioned and allows the reader to experience personal encounters with death, loss and grief that he laments throughout this poem, thereby underlining the futility of war. He also demonstrates the everyday struggles during the Great Depression in Kings Cross within the poem “William Street” during the financial state in the 1930s.

When in a climatic finale of the episode Commander Ryker, who represents the Starfleet and by extension Maddox says that Officer Data is a physical representation of a dream, conceived by human mind as a collection of algorithms to serve human needs, built by human hands, and that, now, a man will shut it off, he negates all of the views that looked into the problem of mind and body. While Captain Picard views Data as a combination of interactionism and parallelism, and Maddox from a purely materialistic perspective, Ryker takes the idea of Leibnitz and gives it a modern twist. Officer Data, implies he, is indeed preordained, however not by God but by humans. Data was constructed by humans, humans programed it, came up with the idea and gave