Greeting Good morning Ladles and Gentlemen, thank-you for attending the Queensland state library today and also celebrating with me the English cultural heritage of past and present poets. One of the most famous World War 1 poets in today’s history, Robert Graves, describes his poems through his terror and fear of his war experiences. Throughout this lecture today I will be discussing the theme of Poetry and Power portrayed wealth Graves poems and how his life and writings have Influenced poets today. Acknowledgement of context and topic What lead me to the central idea of choosing Graves’ war poems was from the rueful stories of ANZA day.
They were touching and graphic, Inspiring me to focus on the concept of war. Poets from Robert Graves’ era are Like today’s war photographers, they capture an extreme image within their wording, creating a vivid image in the readers head. Your central idea * Responsive to the task question Specific and focused Offer a challenging assertion or proposition about the poet’s engagement with an issue of continuing importance (nature, love, war, relationships, Justice etc. ) * Clearly asserts your own conclusion based on evidence Your poet’s biographical details, body of work and two poems
Robert Graves was born In 1895, In Windblown, London. He grew up In a middle class family, attending a series of six preparatory schools whilst completing his education. He was best known for his poetry but also a lecturer and novelist. Over Grave’s lifetime he wrote more than 140 works. These works basically incorporated all his horrific and magnificent experiences of the war. Two poems Poem: The Dead Bocce To you who’d read my songs of War And only hear of blood and fame, I’ll say (you heard it said before) Today I found in Mate Wood A certain cure for lust of blood:
Where, propped against a shattered trunk, In a great mess of things unclean, Sat a dead Bocce; he scowled and stunk With clothes and face a sodden green, Big bellied, spectacled, crop-haired, Dribbling black blood from nose and beard. Poem: The Leveler Near Nonromantic that night of Hell Two men were struck by the same shell, Together tumbling in one heap Senseless and limp like slaughtered sheep. 00 One was a pale eighteen-year-old, Blue-eyed and thin and not too bold, Pressed for the war not ten years too soon, 0 The shame and pity of his platoon.
The other came from far-off lands With brisling chin and whiskered hands, 0 He had known death and hell before Olin Mexico and Ecuador. Yet in his death this cut-throat wild 0 Groaned ‘Mother! Mother! ‘ like a child, While the poor innocent in man’s clothes Died cursing God with brutal oaths. 00 Old Sergeant Smith, kindest of men, 0 Wrote out two copies and then 0 Of his accustomed funeral speech To cheer the woman folk of each:- 00 “He died a hero’s death: and we His comrades of ‘A’ Company Deeply regret his death: we shall 0 All deeply miss so true a pal. Analysis of Poem 1.
Dot point Matter, Meaning and Method, always relating to your entrap Idea. Select several quotations and select a number of techniques. The central theme of this powerful war poem is the disparity that exists between the the reader as “you” in the opening line and, by using this technique, immediately captures and positions the reader to receive the poem’s full challenge. This message is that the glorification of war ignores the reality. War’s Hell! ” and if you doubt the same, The phrase ‘songs of War’ in the first line refers to the fact that war was glorified in songs, often involving fame and achievements.
The poet, as a soldier, appears to own Hess songs but, given the poem’s grim content, the songs are almost certainly not written by him. The reader, to whom the poem is addressed, is one who would “read” songs of War and only “hear of blood and fame”, rather than a soldier actually involved in the fighting. In the second line of the poem, Graves introduces for the first time the word “blood” which is a unifying theme throughout the poem. In the first stanza, the poet connects the fame of war with “blood”, and the glory of war with the “lust of blood”. This underlying message conveyed by the poem is reinforced in the third line where
Graves responds to the reader by ‘speaking two direct observations. First, Graves introduces to the reader a first general contradiction, which is that, contrary to the songs of War, war is in fact Hell, which is nothing to sing about. The reader has heard this said before, but still reads the songs. In the first two lines of this stanza, the poet describes the place where he discovered his cure. Graves’ use of the word “shattered” conveys a scene of nature destroyed; the phrase “great mess” speaks of a place of disorder and chaos; and the words things unclean” speak of something repugnant and almost immoral.
In that unnatural setting, Graves found a dead “Bocce”, which is a word that is today an archaism but which still conveys the impersonal and diminishing descriptions which were given to the enemy. However, in this case, the poet forces the reader to go beyond the victory of an enemy defeated, and to examine the actual victim. the end of the first and third lines of each stanza rhyming; the words at the end of the second and fourth lines of each stanza also rhyming; and the words at the end of he fifth and sixth lines of each stanza rhyming.
