How does Allen Curnow convey his struggles with the writing process?

The poem begins to address the state of an imperfectly built house to explain the difficulties of life to his potential wife. The first line by saying, ‘Nothing is plumb, level, or square.’ (Dugan 1) Although he is describing the imperfections of a house he is figuratively alluding to his personal mistakes. However, through the next lines the “studs are bowed, the joists are shaky by nature, no piece fits any other piece without a gap, or pinch, and bent nails, dance all over the surfacing, like maggots”(Dugan 2-6) is a grim aspect of the life and how nothing seems to be going right. To further explain why it is grim is because the imagery is like the house is about to feel apart and the speaker feels the same way in life. In a house if your nails are bent, studs are bowed, and the joists are shaky the foundation and structure is not well designed much like how the speaker feels like his life is caving in. Through the next metaphor like maggots it gives an image of decay and makes you feel a sense of desperation. The statement, ‘No piece fits any other piece without a gap or pinch’ continues to reveal how incomplete the speaker finds the way he has lived his life in lines three through five. In this section. The speaker is unsatisfied with everything about himself because there is not a single thing he feels is, perfect about his past, everything has been a disaster.

In the poem he veers from any pattern and words like, "abject louse," and "maggot," followed his reputation of having an angry diction. His work is completely impulsive which was seen as exotic and passionate, which certainly reflected the period. In his poetry he was said by Norton to stay away from, "making any sense or reason," (Saintsbury, 50).

This is a poem that problematizes ‘language’. “Language plays an altogether fundamental role in human thinking, and it bestows on man his unique ability

The language in the poem has extremely powerful qualities which invoke vivid imagery. Metaphor, repetition, assonance and various punctuation techniques are used to highlight the poems themes and mood. "Metho Drinker's" prayer is by far the most powerful language in the poem. He is asked to be relieved of the

Immediately the reader notices that the troubled and puzzled tone is created by the issue of ‘colour’ and ‘black skin’, directing the readers gaze to the theme of racism. The sense of pain and trouble is deepened due the simile in stanza one as on the one hand, the poet associates ‘black skin’ with ‘velvet’, expressing a sense of pride and innocence with the ‘black’ colour line, but at the same time the black skin is also the cause of trouble, it is the reason that the racial other is being discriminated against.

The poet uses many metaphors, repetition and morbid diction to illicit the response I had to this poem. Firstly, Butson compared the emotions and internal struggles of a

Throughout the poem the tone and harmony is showing many different moods including shyness, anger and calmness. An example of shyness is at the start of the poem “softy, silently it swishes”, an example of anger is in the middle of the poem “it thumps, it sprays it rips at shores, its ozone spray”, and finally at the end of the poem calmness is shown, “it spends its strength, it sings, it sighs. The wave recedes”. One aspect of the poem I find intriguing is the alliteration and personification. For example, “it sighs, it sings, it seeks”.

In the second and third quatrains, the speaker uses analogies to describe why he wouldn't return to his lover. In each of the analogies, Gascoigne uses an animal longing for their object of desire. In the first second quatrain, it is a mouse that doesn't not fall for the same trap it once escaped from. In the third quatrain, it is the fly that will not be scorched by the same flame twice. In both analogies, the subjects escape from a dangerous conflict, only to want to return to that conflict again, as the desire is one that the subject needs to survive. By using this type of application to show the speaker’s conflict, the speaker better shows and develops their attitude towards the main subject of the poem. The imagery in these analogies helps to create the complex attitude of the speaker because by using the analogy, the reader is able to connect the speaker's feelings to a real life situation. The audience is able to better understand the scenario because the author compared it to an everyday scenario that can be easily pictured. Gascoigne skillfully uses imagery in the form of analogies to convey the complex attitude of the

The main conflict in the poem, “Introduction to Poetry”, is that a teacher is troubled by his students not wanting to put effort into understanding poetry. He uses metaphors and similes to explain how a poem should be analyzed to be understood and appreciated and how the students want to understand what the poem means without putting in the effort and mindset that go into reading poetry. For example, the author says, “and hold it up to the light like a color side”, which is a simile that explains how the teacher is comparing the

After reading the Literal translation one might be fairly in touch with the poem and

This can be seen when she said, “ A rough boy told you how you were born. You kicked him, but stared at your parents, appalled, when you got back home”. This shows that she was starting to lose her innocence as a child as she got to know how she was born and even though she kicked the boy for telling her, she was still shocked by the new information she received. The poet describes herself kicking the boy, thus using imagery to describe her anger towards the boy. She says that she stared at her parents when she got home, thus using imagery to tell her audience that she was curious about the way she was born and the fact that her parents went through the process.

Because the poem is long, it won’t be quoted extensively here, but it is attached at the end of the paper for ease of reference. Instead, the paper will analyze the poetic elements in the work, stanza by stanza. First, because the poem is being read on-line, it’s not possible to say for certain that each stanza is a particular number of lines long. Each of several versions looks different on the screen; that is, there is no pattern to the number of lines in each stanza. However, the stanzas are more like paragraphs in a letter than

The poem begins with two lines which are repeated throughout the poem which convey what the narrator is thinking, they represent the voice in

Judith Wright extensively uses the structure of her poems to convey many ideas and themes. The structure of a poem is crucial to delivering its key message as it determines both the tone and how the poem is read. She shows the reader throughout the poem how the dust, which is symbolic of the barren emptiness that has “overtaken… dreams” of beauty and comfort as well as financial dependence, will consume the earth if the current environment is not conserved and protected. Wright’s use of title emphasizes this point in the clearest way she can and re-enforces her major concept to the audience. Another example of how structure is used in this poem is juxtaposition. The first and second stanzas are strategically placed next to each other because of their greatly opposing descriptions. In stanza one, the new world of dust and wind, many negative adjectives are used, such as “harsh”, “grief” and “steel-shocked”. Stanza two, which talks about the past, contains a wide range of positive adjectives such as “good”, “kinder” and “beautiful”.

Here is the interpretation and analysis of the poem based on the sections that respect the grammar and meaning of its sentences: