TOPIC: "Compare the attitudes of two poets to show Australians' concerns in two different eras."

Plan for Homework exercise 13 August 2001

Compare "Past Carin'" by Henry Lawson and "Your Attention Please" Peter Porter.

Feature	Past Carin' by Henry Lawson 1890s	"Your Attention Please" Peter Porter 1960s
content	reviews her life of grief, loss, desolation, loneliness, despair	fictional warning on impending atomic attack
voice	Australian bush woman; looks backward; poet sympathetic with readership	anonymous public official in proclamation; looks forward to a fictionalised future scenario; poet challenges contemporary readers
form	ballad rhyming scheme without a strong story; theme of dought, death, disaster as in all ballads	one demanding stanza of 62 lines; demands attention in reading; hi-tech totem items: "cuckoo in perspex panel", plasma flasks, suicide pills.
purpose	provides an understanding of plight of the pioneers; Australian icon celebrated	monitary or cautionary poem about contemporary issues
evaluation	very successful demonstration of feelings; very 'Australian'; has perennial value and enduring appeal; universal application; high emotive appeal; enduring human situation: "like Niobe all tears". My rating ** See Drover's Wife	limited appeal outside its era My rating: *

© G. Smith 2001

The Response begun . . .

Poets reflect on issues in their contemporary society; poems can be like archaeological artefacts indicative of their society's concerns. To demonstrate this claim, this discussion will compare two poems from two centuries of Australian verse: Lawson's Past Carin' and Porter's Your Attention Please to show how quite different social issues reveal how poets' attitudes articulate and support the current concerns of their readers.

Lawson's form and content suited pre-Federation readers. He reflected the colonial and iconic. . . .

Porter's form and message reflect "the times they are achangin'" in the 1960s. The Cuban missile crisis of 1963 was no fiction; the world was indeed on the brink of a nuclear catastrope and Porter fictionalises this possibility for Australian readers. No longer does an Australian poet enhance nationalism; he sees his role as enhancing a new internationalism, Australia's new international multicultural outlook. Australia had grown up in the family of nations, and was accepting its responsibility as a global partner. No longer would the Bush icons sustain a pertinent message .... His cautionionary message .....

by G. B. Smith 13 August 20.

Retunr to Year 11 Ozpoetry page

Compsed in Brisbane Australia 13 August 2001. Address is: http://home.pacific.net.au/~greg.hub/lawson.html