Dreamtime Poem Analysis

Dreamtime is a poem written by Odgeroo Noonucal (Kath Walker). Kath Walker is well known as an Australian poet. She uses her work to convey the aspects of Australian experience. Her poems usually focus on her own perspective of the culture and beliefs of both the Indigenous people and white Australians, the racial discrimination that the Aborigines suffered and the Indigenous people’s spirituality. This poem was firstly published in 1972 when some Australian volunteers busy fighting for the rights of the Aborigines in Australia. Even there was the Aboriginal Tent Embassy who is set up on the lawn outside Parliament House in Canberra, highlighting that Aboriginal people feel like 'foreigners in their own country so long as they have no legal freehold title to any part of Australia'. In this situation, Kath Walker also wants to express her feeling about what the Aborigines feel throughout her poem. In order to create a closer relationship to the reader, instead of using many figurative language or connotations, Kath Walker chooses quite familiar words, allowing the reader to relate the text into the condition that happen in the time she wrote the poem itself.

In this poem, Kath Walker selects quite simple title which is Dreamtime. When the reader first read the title of this poem, they may think that this poem will talk about the dream or expectation of particular people. Yet, when they have read the whole poem and frame out the history that lies behind it about the Aborigines, they will find out that the term “Dreamtime” here is different with what they had thought earlier. Since the poem was related to the Aborigines, we relate the title of the poem with the Aborigines. According to crystallink.com, Dreamtime has a lot of meaning for Aboriginal people. It is like an Aboriginal beliefs. There are actually many versions of Dreamtime stories in Australia since there were many different clans of Aboriginal people. Big Black Dog Communications (2008) stated the Dreamtime stories in the following statements. "In most stories of the Dreaming, the Ancestor Spirits of Aboriginal people came to the earth in human form and as they moved through the land, they created the animals, plants, rocks and other forms of the land that we know today. They also created the relationships between groups and individuals to the land, the animals and other people." Thus, Dreamtime here is about the relations tied among human, plants, animals, and other natural things. Based on that term, Aboriginal people believe that all aspects of the Earth are from their ancestors. Their land, their plants, their animals, their cultures is all their relatives, their life and their identity

The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm Poem

The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm is a poem written by Wallace Steven. Wallace Steven is one of America's most respected poets. Besides, he was also a philosopher of aesthetics, vigorously exploring the notion of poetry as the supreme fusion of the creative imagination and objective reality. Because of the extreme technical and thematic complexity of his study, Steven was sometimes considered a willfully difficult poet. But he also acknowledged as an eminent abstractionist and a provocative thinker, and that reputation has continued since his death. According to the English.illinois.edu, “Steven had been actually well known as an extraordinary poet who likes to write or create his in the form of extended meditative sequences, quasi-philosophical in their ruminative wanderings, but marked always by a vivid sense of the absurd and a darting, whirling inventiveness that took delight in peculiar anecdotal examples.” He prefers to choose the simple and well-known of words in his poem. However, using his creativity, he constructed those simple words into very deep meaning poems depicted some image, sense, feeling, and situation which is sometimes quite mystical and mysterious that can posses into the reader’s feeling when he/she read the poems felt just what Steven expected.

In this poem, as usual, Steven creates the title of this poem using familiar words such as house, world, quiet, and calm. Yet, when it has been constructed into the title of his poem, it may have very deep meaning in the particular sense that we can feel even when we read the title at the first time. when the reader reads the title of this poem “The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm” we can directly feel attracted towards the sense of quietness and calmness delivered by it. We can sense using our logical that when the house was quiet, there was no noise at all that we can hear. It perhaps can happen if the house was really empty or if it was night so that the surrounding environment that creates the sense of its quietness. Then, it was added with the words “the world was calm”. When the world can be that calm? That question may lead to reveal the literal meaning of this poem’s title. In the very busy country, just like in the capital city of a certain place, we may find it hard to find the time when the world should show its calmness. However, when it is not a very busy country, we may find that the night time is the appropriate time when we can say that the world was calm since every person started to go to their own rest place after a long day of work. Therefore, if we combine the title “The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm” and relate it to the literal analysis portrayed by its words, we can find out that this poem may talk about something which may happen in the night time when there is no loud noise are made out. 

“We Real Cool” Short Analysis

We real cool is one of the unique poems written by Gwendolyn Brooks. If we see the structure of this poem, it mostly uses subject “we” in all of its stanza. Thus, the emphasize of  this poem could be “we” the seven pool players. It emphasizes the unity, togetherness and the identity of the group instead of an individual group.

This poem seems to use the up and down tone. Most of the reader of this poem may think that what this group do is kind of dangerous thing. Even, what they do is not a crime, but it can harm themselves. Yet, in my opinion, this group may think that all they do is cool instead of the dangerous thing.