2012 Module B Standard Question
How does Wright’s portrayal of the relationship between the observer and the landscape
move us to a deeper understanding of the passing of time?
In your response make detailed reference to at least TWO poems set for study.
Sample Response: Poetry
Prescribed Text: Collected poems 1942-1985 Judith Wright
Introduction
is conscious
of the
question and
develops a
thesis that
responds to
the question,
while
bringing in
relevant
contextual
information
The topic
sentence
considers
time and then
explains this
with
evidence
Wright’s
biographical
context is
connected to
the ideas and
poem being
discussed
The imagery
is explained
with
reference to
Wright’s own
statements
In Wright’s poetry, the observer and the landscape – “man as part of nature”
(Wright interview, 1965) – serve to share important messages about the way we
have interacted and continue to interact with our environment. Wright’s
understanding of the relationship between humans and the land reflects her own
past growing up in a pastoralist family and later work as an environmental activist.
In her poetry the landscape often becomes a metaphor for the passing of a
distinctively Australian time with explicit references to Australian historical events
and situations. But paradoxically her poems do not remain in the past, instead
using landscape as a bridge to the present, offering support for conservation, a
movement she embraced wholeheartedly in her lifetime.
Perhaps the most traditional of her poems is the well-known “South of my Days”
with its nostalgia for an idealized Australian past. The title metaphorically refers to
a time outside the present, but part of the persona’s “circle”. Circularity is a
feature of Wright’s poetry, symbolizing generational change. European and
Australian images come together in this poem, capturing the struggle between the
two cultures. Her own strong relationship to this past is evident in the first person
possessive pronoun of the title and the metaphor “part of my blood’s country”
but this also imitates an Aboriginal phrasing about the connection to land,
suggesting an indigenous presence which is absent from the rest of the poem.
The fragility of the landscape with its “delicate outline” is evoked through the
personification of the tableland as “wincing”, “lean” and “hungry” with “bony
slopes”. In the midst of this landscape is the European “old cottage” surrounded
by imported species of trees “willow”, “medlar” “crabapple” which casts a
destructive presence over the native vegetation by choking the creek which is
“leaf-silenced”. In one stanza we therefore see the struggle of the native landscape
to assert its presence against intrusive English imports. The strength of Wright’s
environmental concerns is visually brought to the fore in this scene of
environmental degradation showing how the passing of time has affected the
landscape. As a founding member of the Wildlife Preservation Society of
Queensland (1962), Wright was ever conscious of the attacks on the environment
which families such as her own pastoral family inflicted.
From this scene of chaotic struggle, there is a yearning for “summer” and its
“wave of rambler roses”. While the European imagery represents an incursion on
the natural order of things it is also a consciousness on the part of Wright to
acknowledge her audience. In 1963, when interviewed about symbolism in her
poetry, Judith Wright acknowledged that the Australian “landscape had no
echoes” for audiences outside Australia and that an image of a waratah which is so
evocative for Australian readers meant nothing to English readers. This
understanding of an international readership obviously had an impact on the way
she captures the relationship between the observer and the landscape, especially in
this stanza.
Time is
explored
through the
historical
past of the
poem
The poem shares a colonial past of storytellers and bush yarns, of droughts and
deaths, of droving and mustering and bushrangers. The abundance of Australian
country place names (Charleville, the Hunter, the McIntyre, Sandy Camp,
Bogongs, Tamworth), and the descriptions of the typically tragic outback events,
capture a sense of the mythology of Australia, expressed through a distinctively
Australian idiom. We can hear a different voice to the first stanza in the diction of
The effect on the yarner who narrates his story in the first person and animates it with his own
comments on the characters: “I give him a wink” and “he went like a luny”.
the
responder is
considered
Direct
reference to
the question
Poem is
introduced
using the
comparative
adjective
“bleaker”
The
discussion
connects to
the previous
poem to
locate the
poet’s voice
across poems
Evidence can
be inserted in
brackets after
the relevant
statements
Summing up
and showing
that there is a
connection
between the
poems
The last stanza returns to a more reflective tone, showing the changed perspective
of the passage of time. A different harshness enters the scene with “frost” and
“winter” to remind the old man the “yarns are over” and “no-one is listening”.
The stories of the past are an integral part of the observer’s relationship with the
land.
An even bleaker view emerges in the poem “Flame Tree in a quarry”. The
juxtaposition suggested in the title of the “flame tree” in the “quarry” sets up the
negative impact of time on nature, as the beauty of the tree is taken over by the
quarry. It seems that nature is sacrificed this time to the commercial activity of the
quarry but Wright only refers to “quarry” in the title and implicitly in the first line
“broken bone of the hill”. The landscape is “broken”, “stripped”, “left for
dead,/like a wrecked skull” . By personifying the landscape Wright is accentuating
the tragedy of the loss of nature. The visual tragedy is further emphasised through
the aural effect of the alliteration of the “bush of blood”, creating a violent
pounding sound but also, like the burning bush in the Bible, a sign of
regeneration. This time the singer is not a bush storyteller as in ‘South of my
Days’ but the earth struggling to make a “cry of praise”, like a hymn. The land in
this poem takes on a spiritual dimension with the biblical allusion to the act of
communion in “the song made flesh”.
Wright is not just an observer but an active participant in the spiritual communion
offered by the land (“I drink you with my sight/ and I am filled with fire.”) She
herself stated in an interview (1965) that in nature “we can perceive… an
inescapable correspondence with the processes of our own bodies” and this is
clearly elucidated in the poem. The appearance of the vibrant red flowers of the
flame tree become the “bush of blood”, the “fire”, the “scarlet breath” and
eventually the “fountain of hot joy” which paradoxically is also a “living ghost of
death” like the “host” of the communion. Despite the tragedy of the scene, there
is a strong sense of hope that with the passing of time, nature will return and
reclaim the space of the quarry.
These two poems, are very much observations of a landscape undergoing change
as time passes. Despite Wright’s anxiety about the loss of the past, she has a great
faith in the ability of the earth to regenerate. Her love of the land is an intensely
spiritual one which she not only conveys in her poetry in the way she supported
the conservation of the environment.