3 posts tagged “poetry”

I am putting together an english unit for grades11/12 and I am using Frankenstein for the novel, Twilight as the movie and would like a poem to sync with those two items. Does anyone have any suggestions of the poetic kind?

I have chosen two more Bruce Dawe poems for my class presentation.

"ALL YE NEED TO KNOW …"

Quadrant ,  Jan, 1999   by Bruce Dawe

   Early in the evening the newscasters

   their faces the woven masks of gods

   bring us the bright rubble of the world

   broken into quick fragments

   so that we can understand

   how it must be, out there,

   where the great waves begin. In their long fingers

   the riots sparkle like snapped necklaces, diamonds of blood,

   black diamonds, white diamonds, a nation's leaders

   racing up the steps of important buildings

   trailing sounds to remind us we are supposedly

   rational creatures, cars on blocked highways

   mate like crippled insects, there is a shoot-out in Arkansas

   with a neighbour frowning saying: "He was such a quiet guy,

   y'know?"

   a Shi'ite militiaman waves for the camera in East Beirut

   and the Blues play at home in the final State of Origin game

   -- meanwhile, back at the place where the heart

   used to be there is the kind of calm that comes

   when the storm stops, and the eyes, those ravaged creatures,

   creep up from their blinking cellars ...

COPYRIGHT 1999 Quadrant Magazine Company, Inc.

Premonitions

Quadrant ,  Oct, 1997   by Bruce Dawe

Un-poor, un-desperate back their vans

Right up to the Life-line bins;

Food companies recall from sale

Suspicion-contaminated tins.

Bomb-hoaxers every week compel

Evacuation of a block;

Drug-hungry thieves to feed their veins

Ply their arts around the clock.

Syringe-bandits wave red wands

Nightly in convenience-stores;

Somewhere another family writhes

In a home-invader's jaws.

Kids with nothing else to do

In stolen cars burn up the night;

Pollies, to better serve the State,

Book their next exotic flight.

Bouncers now at all-night clubs

Hesitate to intervene;

The land (like Carthage) yields up salt,

River-systems turn blue-green.

Charity is on the town,

The mentally-ill turned out-of-doors;

Casinos raise their triple crowns

While premiers bow to paid applause.

Collective therapy's where it's at,

The heart's deep reasons are explored;

New Age cultists go to bat

(With ready cheque-books) for the Lord.

Schools are trashed andset alight

(Creative work for idle hands);

The suicide of teenage males

(One growth industry) expands.

Small towns, small businesses decline

("Downsizing" is the way ahead);

Public utilities are flogged off,

The GST raised from the dead.

The big get bigger every year,

Foreign investors call the tune;

The underdogs of Oz now bark

Angrily at the winter moon.

COPYRIGHT 1997 Quadrant Magazine Company, Inc.

This is a poem by the Australia poet Bruce Dawe who lives in Toowoomba, Queensland. I have loved this poem ever since my class was chosen to present a public performance of it at a school function. Some ten years ago I had the opportunity to meet Bruce Dawe as his late first wife Gloria was a past student of the same school that my daughters attended. After her death he instigated the Gloria Dawe prize for English and our Daughter2 was the first winner of the annual prize. We attended a morning tea where she was presented with her prize and we were able to spend some time speaking with Bruce Dawe. It was a wonderful moment for both my daughter and I.

So this is one of my favourite poems - enjoy

Enter without so much as knocking

Bruce Dawe

Momento, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris.....
(Remember man, from dust you came and to dust you shall return)

Blink, blink, HOSPITAL, SILENCE.
Ten days old, carried in the front door in his
mothers arms, first thing he heard was
Bobby Dazzler on Channel 7:
Hello, hello, hello all you lucky people and he
really was lucky because it didn't mean a thing
to him then....

A year or two to settle in and
get acquainted with the set-up; like every other
well-equipped smoothly-run household, his included
one economy-sized Mum, one Anthony Squires-
Coolstream-summerweight Dad, along with two other kids
straight off the Junior Department rack.

When mum won the
Lucks-A-Fortch Tricky-Tune Quiz, she took him shopping
in the good-as-new station-wagon ($495 dep at Renos).
Beep, beep. WALK, DONT WALK, TURN
LEFT, NO PARKING, WAIT HERE, NO
SMOKING, KEEP CLEAR/OUT/OFF GRASS, NO
BREATHING EXCEPT BY ORDER, BEWARE OF
THIS, WATCH OUT FOR THAT, My God (beep)
the conjestion here just gets (beep)
worse every day, now what the (beep beep) does
that idiot think hes doing (beep beep and BEEP)

However, what he enjoyed most of all was when they
went to the late show at the local drive-in, on a clear night
and he could see (beyond the fifty-foot screen where
giant faces forever snarled screamed or made
incomprehensible and monstrous love) a pure
unadulterated fringe of sky, littered with stars
no-one had got around to fixing up yet; Hed watch them
circling about in luminous groups like kids at the circus
who never go quite close enough to the elephant to get kicked.

Anyway, pretty soon he was old enough to be
realistic like every other godless
money-hungry back-stabbing miserable
so-and-so, and then it was goodbye stars and the soft
cry in the corner when no-one was looking because
Im telling you straight, Jim, its Number One every time
for this chicken, hit wherever you see a head and
kick whoevers down, well thanks for a lovely
evening Clare, its good to get away from it all
once in a while, I mean its a real battle all the way
and a man cant help but feel a little soiled, himself,
at times, you know what I mean?

Now take it easy
on those curves, Alice, for Gods sake;
I've had enough for one night, with that Clare Jessup,
hey, ease up, will you, Watch it--

Probity & Sons Morticians,
did a really first-class job on his face
(everyone was very pleased) even adding
a healthy tan hed never had, living, gave him back for keeps
the old automatic smile with nothing behind it,
winding the whole show up with a
nice ride out to the underground metropolis:
permanent residentials, no parking tickets, no taximeters
ticking, no Bobby Dazzlers here, no down payments,
nobody grieving over halitosis
flat feet shrinking gums falling hair,

six feet down nobody interested

Blink, blink, CEMETERY, Silence.