For A Pastoral Family Poem Analysis

Within the poem For a Pastoral Family this notion of a reinvigoration of interpretation can be seen, with its focus on the traditional - the pastoral families of Australia and their connection with the natural world. As Wright advises “there are luxuries still / including pastoral silence, miles of slope and hill.” Within the poem, at least on a surface thematic synthesis, the speaker is clearly advocating a view that this ‘pastoral life’ and image is a positive one. This is shown in comparison to a more cosmopolitan world with lines denouncing “the wickedness of cities / and the cities politics.” In an arguably renewed engagement and pleasure in the pastoral and rural poetic form Wright also critiques this existence in a defined and pointed …show more content…
This is most clearly illustrated in the second stanza of To My Brothers, when after raising the concern regarding the perhaps over ‘gnawing’ of the country leaves to the speaker “a base for poetry / a doubtful song that has a dying fall.” Just as the land is overused leaving only “a margin” so too is the speaker left a “doubtful song” which is dying, or at least struggling to exist and has become marginal, existing on the periphery. As the “rural security” of the “ancient difficult bush” is destroyed by those that “were always part of a process” of “the really deplorable deeds” the topography, biological ecosystem, and the poet’s creative ‘song’ is also eroded. She is throughout the poem, especially in these lines, using the language and imagery of the poem with an arguably determined purpose. That is to link the poetic form and its position, socially and academically with the ecological nature of Australia. With the dual or twin meaning of the two working in this way to thematically link nature and poetry. The furthering of this discussion and use of nature within the poem - in considering the effect humans and the pastoral farmers have had upon it. Leads the reader to a synthesis of ecological concerns, or ecocriticism, and the state of the “doubtful song” of poetry in an over cultivated …show more content…
If one considers the pastoral overtures within it in a similar vein to that of Judith Wright’s poem To My Brothers. That the use of the picturesque natural scene is once more a reference to earlier poetic styles. Given this it can be seen as a reference point to the form of poetry as a whole. In this reading, one can view the inability to differentiate the “individual shades” of the “delicate tips and hints” as being indicative of the poet’s own inability to differentiate, between the shades of language and their respective fields of knowledge. This is further demonstrated by the casual usage of scientific vernacular within the poem. Both in the purposeful separation of these lines by brackets such as “(my cerebral / and visual cortex is as old as me)” and also in the much more naturalised use of the term “epithelium.” A word created and primarily used within a scientific linguistical system, or basic scientific language game. With epithelium being unbracketed, showing an inability to keep these separate language systems completely apart within the