Australian Poetry An Analysis of Bruce Dawes Poem,...

Bruce Dawe is considered to be one of Australia’s most influential poets of the 20th century. Dawe’s poems capture Australian life in numerous ways, whether it is our passion for AFL in Life-Cycle or our reckless nature towards war as in Homecoming. Dawe creates very complicated poems reflecting the author’s context relevant to the time period, your context is based upon your reading of the poem, where you may gather different meanings, to that of the original intent, hidden within the text. Life-Cycle: Written in the 1960’s this poem is one of the most famous of Dawe’s collection. Written to reflect Australia’s passion for its national sport it creates analogies with that of the catholic religion. This fact may be taken in a number†¦show more content†¦This line can be referenced to the sacrament of baptism. In the sacrament of baptism children are dressed in white and prepared for entering the church life and allowing God into their lives. Like baptism the child has no opinion into its choice of favorite footy team the parents simply choose it for them which occurs in baptism, the child has no say as to if it wants to be baptized into a religion, the infants guardians baptize him/her into their religious order regardless of their wishes. There is a constant atmosphere of war throughout the duration of the poem. It is present in the idea that the footy teams are in constant battle with each other to win the ultimate prize; The Grand Final. There is also a reference to a war poem within the line ‘They will not grow old as those from more northern States grow old’ this line has been taken from the poem Ode of Remembrance and manipulated to suit the AFL theme. The Ode was written by Laurence Binyon in commemoration of those soldiers who died in World War 1 . This reference to the Ode also supports the idea of war in the poem through its original genre of post-war. Dawe himself also may have drawn on his own experiences to enhance this battle atmosphere. Dawe joined the RAAF when he was 38