Bruce Dawes Poetry :: essays research papers

Discuss 2 of Dawe's poems which illustrates his belief that ordinary things in life are a good subject for poetry.Bruce Dawe poems illustrate his version of "ordinary". The poems I have studied of his work have been about life and how people deal with everyday living. Such poems as Drifters and Homosuburbiensis are good examples of how Dawe captures the meaning of "ordinary". Drifters is about a family who move from place to place, as the father needs to move by the demand of his job. The young children are growing up to learn no other way of life, as they are all waiting for the day they shall move again. The children get very excited about this, as it is something different and is of course an adventurous, in ordinary life.The eldest, she is seeing what she is missing out on and is becoming aware that there nomadic lives may never change. She who once was one of those excited children, realises she can not lead a normal teenage life as she is not stationed long enough, to become friends with people her own age. She is becoming frustrated with her life. She becomes upset but knows she has to accept the inevitable. From the above Dawe shows compassion for the eldest as she has to go through this more than once. Also the young children are going to grow up to realise they will too go through the same thing. Dawe also shows a serious side in the poem, as the mother just wants to settle down and have the bright future she has always dreamed of. Dawe has a sympathetic outlook towards the mother, by outlining her hopes and dreams, also asking her husband Tom to make a wish in the last line of the poem. Thus hoping he will choose the same path in life that would be concrete and will bring them closer together. Because this is a continuous event the mother is getting frustrated as at the time of packing once again she finds that she has not unpacked from there last move.This poem is not everyone's ordinary life but a life the have to lead in order to stay functional. The family have to make sacrifices because it is more of a necessity. This life they lead is ordinary to the young children but frustrating towards the eldest and the mother.