'The Cyclist' Poetry Commentary

In the novel Longboat Bay are the starting and the main setting. The characters Abel and his mother Dora lives on the land of Longboat Bay. The lands have been the Jacksons land for more than a century and have been taking care of it since now. Abel lives in a place with no main electricity from the city and no water except rainwater. The land around them is a national park and behind the house is the orchard. This is shown in the quote “and all the land around them was a national park.” And “there were orange and lemon trees in the orchard as well as olives and mulberries.” The sea is “rich in life” and the author invites the reader to want to care for the sea. This technique shows the beauty of the sea and the land around it.

The use of simile in the last stanza ‘matchstick hands as pale as the violet stems they lived among’ is used to compare a frog to violet flowers, which are very delicate and easily broken. The innocence of childhood is painted through this visual technique as the narrator only sees the frogs being very delicate, but to the readers the simile also creates a vivid image of the condition of the ‘Frogs’/ the French. The use of first person helps to create a reminiscent tone about the narrator’s experiences, and further helps to stress the ideas of childhood innocence and the influence of war on children because the poem is written from a child’s perspective. The use of enjambment generates a conversational and personal tone, emphasizing to the readers the reality of the themes discussed throughout the poem. The use of symbolism of frogs as pets and also representing the French highlights the idea that adults saw ‘Frogs’ as insignificant or unworthy to speak about, whereas the children could not understand this adult thought, and they placed exemplary regard to the wellbeing of the

Imagery is used to portray the themes of For the fire by John Foulcher and The surfer by Judith Wright by a variation of literary techniques and contrasting imagery types such as natural, animal and sensory.

The poem I will be analysing today is Song of the Surf by Dan Ashlin. Ashlin is a born and bred Australian poet who writes modern poems. I believe that I have a strong connection with this poem because of how much I personally love the beach with the soft sand and the ferocious waves. In my opinion this poem isn’t just about the waves in the ocean, but how the ocean has its own life and story to tell.

Childhood is portrayed as a time of safety that is often looked back upon with nostalgia from an adult perspective. Monosyllabic words are used to show the simplicity of childhood life, for example in the line “the thing I could not grasp or name”. The ‘spring violets’ are ‘in their loamy bed’ and are no longer frail and melancholy, and the memory takes place on a ‘hot afternoon’ in contrast to the ‘cold dusk’ that represents the present. Childhood is represented as a joyful, vivacious time in one’s life, and the value of a stable family life is conveyed. The unexpected integration of Australian vernacular in the line ‘it will soon be night, you goose’, adds a sense of freedom and relaxation to the otherwise formal discourse and more rigid structure of the poem, once again reflects the simplicity and innocence that is associated with childhood. The use of

A.E. Housman was a poet born in 1859 who became very successful during his lifetime. “To an Athlete Dying Young” represents the theme of glory is fleeting by illustrating the point that if a successful athlete dies young, they will not have to worry about their glory of victory fading. They can rest in peace knowing they will be remembered at their athletic peak when they were successful and victorious. They will not have to go through the pain of watching their fame disappear or whither out with time. In this poetic masterpiece, Housman pulls together figurative language, sound devices, and structure to illustrate that glory is fleeting through a

The appreciation of nature is illustrated through imagery ‘and now the country bursts open on the sea-across a calico beach unfurling’. The use of personification in the phrase ‘and the water sways’ is symbolic for life and nature, giving that water has human qualities. In contrast, ‘silver basin’ is a representation of a material creation and blends in with natural world. The poem is dominated by light and pure images of ‘sunlight rotating’ which emphasizes the emotional concept of this journey. The use of first person ‘I see from where I’m bent one of those bright crockery days that belong to so much I remember’ shapes the diverse range of imagery and mood within the poem. The poet appears to be emotional about his past considering his thoughts are stimulated by different landscapes through physical journey.

In the romantic era, British authors and poets focused on nature and its influence. Two of those poets, Charlotte Smith and William Wordsworth, wrote many pieces on the beauty of nature and their personal experiences with the beaches of England. In “Far on the sands” and “It is a beauteous evening,” Smith and Wordsworth describe their respective experiences on the shore at sunset. Both authors use structure, theme, allusions, and imagery to effectively convey their perceptions of nature. While the sonnets share a setting and the topics of nature and tranquility, Smith’s has a focus on introspection and Wordsworth’s is centered around religion. These have different focuses which achieve different effects on the reader.

Mulga Bills Bicycle was written by A.B. “Banjo” Paterson. It is a humorous poem about a man who believes he can ride anything from Bull to Bike. He has never ridden a bike and thinks that he is the best rider in the world. Mulga Bills Bicycle is a poem with verse of irregular lengths. It uses simple language and imagery to generate strong dramatic action and dialogue. The poem has a regular rhythm in rhyming couplets which adds momentum and humour to the story.

The Cycle the past sifted through the cracks of sobriety, there was a crevice within not even sour could sate, palms were always stained scarlet, never pale. if wide eyes traveled back, perpetual thirst would disperse just as sure as today's morphine, is a clasp of mortality don't repeatedly resurrect those you don't love, sacrifice vessels of emotion within, to the boy who couldn’t conceive his own, enough earns a Christopher pendant, corpses, hollow husks of beings, can still wear jewelry.

“Time has a wonderful way of showing us what really matters.” A.E. Housman grew up in a small town in Worcestershire, London. His childhood ended at the age of twelfth because his mother passed away. Then he went to this University where he fell into a dark love and made him depressed. He worked really hard and got a job as a professor at the University College in London. Although he does all of his teaching and helping scholars he is most known for his poetry. His poems display deep feelings and are emotionless. His poems usually affected the reader like a shiver down the spine or a punch in the stomach. I am going to be talking about three messages from the poem “To an Athlete Dying Young” by A.E. Housman.

Poetry can follow your life all the way through, from the innocence of a child, to the end of your days. The comfort, seduction, education, occasion and hope found in poems are elaborated in Poetry Should Ride the Bus by Ruth Forman. As the poem reads on, you not only travel through the life of a person from adolescence to being elderly through vivid imagery, but also hit on specific genres of poems through the personification of poetry as the characters in the stages of life. This poem’s genres hit on what poetry should do and be, by connecting the life many of us live.

“The Beach is written in the style of a free verse poem consisting of two stanzas, the first one having nineteen lines and the second having twelve. The lines vary significantly in length and feature a large amount of enjambment which stretches over fur lines in some cases. The mood and atmosphere of the poem is extremely relaxed and promotes the reader to feel nostalgic about the last time they themselves visited the beach.

Poets use many ways when they want to communicate something using poems. Poems are used as a means of passing ideas, information and expression of feelings. This has made the poets to use the natural things and images that people can relate with so that they can make these poems understandable. The most common forms of writing that are used by the poets are the figurative language for example imagery and metaphors. In addition, the poets use the natural landscape in their attempt to explore the philosophical questions. Therefore, this essay will explore the forms that have been used by the poets in writing poems using the natural landscape. The essay will be based on poems such as ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’ by

In The Land of Cockaygne, the hunger, thirst, and austerity characteristic of fourteenth-century peasant life is imagined away. In place of the meagre medieval peasant diet of “mostly grains, root vegetables, and fruit,” the citizens of Cockaygne dine on a variety of delicacies. While the houses of medieval peasants were simple and sparsely furnished, those of Cockaygne are exquisite, with crystal pillars and decorations of jade and coral. Peasant work was dangerous and difficult; “coroners’ rolls from thirteenth-century England, for example, give grim evidence of the often daily occurrence of serious woundings on peasant farms: digits or limbs severed by farm implements, bones crushed by draft animals or falling stones, legs burned when cloaks brushed against hearth fires, children drowned after falling down wells.” In contrast, the subjects of Cockaygne do not work, but instead pursue lives of ease and luxury. While crime was rampant during the Middle Ages, in Cockaygne “there are no quarrels and no strife, there is no death, but always life.” Throughout the poem, the poet readily juxtaposes the harsh reality of life during the Middle Ages with the pleasantness of life in Cockaygne. In this sense, the