Australian poets deal with feelings - a comparison of eras

1. Harpur and Slessor: feeling and regret

2. Noonuccal and Wright on love

3. Noonuccal and Paterson feelings of far away

1.

Sensuality Feeling hunger and cold, feeling Food, feeling fire, feeling Pity and pain, tasting Time in a kiss, tasting Anger and tears, touching Eyelids and lips, touching Plague, touching flesh, knowing Blood in the mouth, knowing Laughter like flame, holding Pickaxe and pen, holding Death in the hand, hearing Boilers and bells, hearing Birds, hearing hail, smelling Cedar and sweat, smelling Petrol and sea, feeling Hunger and cold, feeling Food, feeling fire. . . . Feeling. by Kenneth Slessor (1901-71)

REGRET. There's a regret that from my bosom aye Wrings forth a dirgy sweetness, like a rain Of deathward love; that ever in my brain Uttereth such tones as in some foregone way Seem gathered from the harmonies that start Into the dayspring, when some rarest view Unveileth its Tempèan grace anew To meet the sun - the great world's fervent heart. 'Tis that, though living in his tuneful day, My boyhood might not see the gentle smile, Nor hear the voice of Shelley; that away His soul had journeyed, ere I might beguile In my warm youth, by some fraternal lay, One thought of his towards this may native isle. Harpur, Charles (1813-1868). Poems.   SETIS: The Scholarly Electronic Text and Image Service

Analysing Slessor's "Sensuality"

Use the SPECS model:

• Subject: feelings, sense impressions
• Purpose: celebrate being alive, variety of feelings
• Emotion: fascination with this facility, mood of joy
• Craft: run-on lines to convey emotions' messy effect and their variety; 18 lines in 2 verses, the second being only one word.
• Summary: Poet applies pairs of present participles to various areas of life to show the diversity; variety of the five senses and the human sensation.

Use the SLIMS model:

• Summary: as above
• Language: simple diction, one sentence verse.
• Imagery: some ugly: "blood in mouth", "plague" etc.
• Movement, rhythm: as above. Cycle begins again at end suggesting pattern in life.
• Sounds:
  alliteration (boilers and bells),
  simile: (laughter like flame),
  onomatopoeia (tasting time in a kiss),
  interesting juxtapositioning of the participles for effect.
  paradoxes (eyelids with lips ... hearing hail).
  surprising reversals: not pen and sword but pickaxe and pen (for sheer alliteration?)

Discussion:
Participles pair through a cycle: feeling, tasting, touching, knowing, holding, hearing, smelling, feeling. NB: But knowing is beyond the senses!
"Feeling" an abstract noun = a way of life (hint of sexuality?) not "feelings" a simple plural.
An effective poem, brief and to the point. Some memorable language devices.

G. Smith 1998.

Second Comparison Exercise

Compare Slessor's "Sensuality" with Charles Harpur's Regret. Situate each in its historical context to show the progress of Australian poetry.

Poems display their historical contexts and inevitably poets are the voices of their age. For this discussion, we take up a comparison of (1901-71) Kenneth Slessor's "Sensuality" with (1813-1868) Charles Harpur's "Regret" to demonstrate the movement in preoccupations across two centuries of Australian poetry.

For subject matter, Harpur's 14 line classical sonnet takes up a sad feeling whereas Slessor's 18 lines of free verse celebrates feeling itself as sensuality. Regarding mood, at the very outset one is struck by the profound contrast between the nineteenth century's pessimistic gloom and a later twentieth's buoyant optimism. Regarding form, Harpur adopts the classical sonnet while Slessor writes in free verse common in the twentieth century. Regarding accessibility, Regret is highly contrived and Sensuality is much more open and readable, being brief and to the point in a busier world.

Major differences appear too in choice of diction and referencing of emotions. Peculiarly, Harpur speaks in his own voice as one expects in poetry as personal expression, but Slessor uses the third person anonymous voice almost clinically as if dissecting the shared human experience. Harpur's octave outlines his discovery that a feeling like a sweet dirge at daybreak echoes the now forgotten eternal harmonies of the cosmic spheres. He perceives in a window of opportunity like was once possible when heaven and earth met in Mt. Olympus. [Tempe is a wooded valley in Thessaly near Mt. Olympus, the home of Zeus and the other ancient Greek gods and hence the home of poetry.] Harpur regrets that although as a boy he lived at the same time as Shelley, the great English Romantic poet, and had never met him or heard his voice, he hopes that now he might trick some thought of Shelley's to focus on Australia. As a warm youth himself, he desires some poetic fellowship with his great patron. In great restraint, Harpur does not end his sestet as we would expect with "my" native isle as a punchline but with "this may native isle" as if denying himself the right of its citizenship yet praising this lovely morning land Australia in the spring of its abundance. While having patriotic elements, this poem avoids melodrama to opine that Australia may just secure a share in the great European heritage of poetry.

In marked contrast, Slessor celebrates the feelings and emotions we all share in the five senses. Where Harpur as seer accesses the transcendental realms of the ethereal perfections in one moment of regret, Slessor touches the human substratum of our species' experience. His poem picks up some movement in the rhythm of life: his poem's unique structure creates a cycle, to begin life again at poem's end, suggesting joy in a pattern in life, in diversity, in the variety of the five senses and in human sensation. Whereas Harpur regrets the death of Shelley, Slessor recaptures nature's plenty in the wonderful experience of being alive. Sensuality is hungry for experience and ranges over some of its extremes, while Regret dwells on one moment of desire. Regret brings pain, "wrings forth a dirgy sweetness", whereas sensuality extends valid knowledge beyond the cognitive. Slessor's paradoxes ("eyelids with lips", "hearing hail") and surprising reversals (not pen and sword but "pickaxe and pen") display our lives' contemporary ambiguities.

Each poet shares his age's ethos. Each is an accomplished poet, yet typical of his age and so displays the conventions of his era. This comparison demonstrates two noteworthy Australian poets a century apart addressing human emotion in different eras in contemporary ways. Our discussion shows if not a progress than at least a movement in poetic style, preoccupations and audiences across the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries. This movement reflects historical changes from a static world view to a dynamic one.

624 words by G. Smith 5 August, 2000.

Third Comparison Exercise

Plan for response

Title	"Gifts" by Oodgeroo Noonuccal	"Woman to man" by Judith Wright
form	6 antiphonal stanzas in free verse; 16 lines	4 verses of five lines each, abcaa; 20 lines
diction	accessible, traditional life setting	rich imagery
structure	dialogue and narration	a string of images of description
theme	love is practical	love is blissful, mysterious, fruitful and dynamic.
rating	very effective, enchanting	rewarding, informative, noteworthy

G. Smith 2000

Two feminine views of love

Different feminine approaches to love appear in "Gifts" by Oodgeroo Noonuccal and "Woman to Man" by Judith Wright. As Australian twentieth century poems, they deserve closer examination and better recognition.

In "Gifts" Noonuccal dramatises an exchange between an Aboriginal suitor and his beau. He offers more extravagant gifts at her every refusal or disinterest. Like an Elizabethan sonnet, "Gifts" plots a conversation increasing steadily in intensity towards the final climactic revelation that the girl does not want words or wild promises from her suitor but a practical gift - just native food. This endearing free verse vignette from traditional life is reassuring and quaintly humorous. Despite its Aboriginal setting, this universal theme situates "Gifts" within the great tradition of Western love poetry.

Wright's poem celebrates a love that "has no name to name it by". I enjoyed Wright's rich imagery in particular. Describing their love as being apparent in the "precise crystals of our eyes" seems particularly apt, as if like Isaac Newton using a prism to make new discoveries, the lovers discern changes in the love spectrum by gazing into each other's eyes. The eyes are "precise" indicators in that they immediately and directly communicate knowledge and feelings together. Again the love is described as being "the blood's wild tree", as if blood itself, the engine of passion, is the fuel that brings forth an indescribable beautiful "folded rose"; this is a happy inversion of the conventional "my love is a red, red rose" by Robert Burns. Nature's logic, unlike Man's it seems, has only Good and Beauty as its fruit. Yet love is also blind, "blind head butting in the dark", seemingly unsure of its course and somewhat foolish too. So by implication, the woman's love can bring only fruit and joy, without any hint of decay or death. Wright's horticultural imagery is particularly helpful. This poem is an emotive treatise on love, featuring philosophical speculations, rich imagery and an economic use of language.

"Gifts" is very effective and enchanting while "Woman to Man" is rewarding, informative and noteworthy . In Woman's address to Man, we might discern Adam and Eve prototypes of lovers in any age. Noonuccal's boy and girl exchange follows a universal pattern. This sense of human universality pervades both poems, giving them a timeless and universal appeal that transcends any particulars of race or time. In this way, these two Australian poets have made moral statements worthy of this much maligned emotion.

409 words © G. Smith 10 August, 2000

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