Essay: Analysis of Selected Poems

This essay includes an analysis of the following poems:

• “David” by Earle Birney
• “Because I Never Learned” by Patrick Lane
• “The Onondaga Madonna” by Duncan Campbell Scott
• “The Forsaken” by Duncan Campbell Scott
• “The Song My Paddle Sings” by E. Pauline Johnson
• “The Skater” by Charles G.D. Roberts
• “What Do I Remember of the Evacuation?” by Joy Kogawa
• “The Immigrants” by Margaret Atwood
• “The Lonely Land” by A.J.M. Smith

Poem: “David”

Poet: Earle Birney

“an overhang crooked like a talon.”

• This line displays the power and threat of the mountains. This sets the scene and tone of the poem.
• The symbol of the robin with a broken wing and the bones of the goat foreshadow the death of David.
• Many geological terms used associate with the story of the boys. Terms such as “crevasses,” “hawks,” “larches,” and “firs” are used in the proper context.
• The complexity between irrationality and respect for one’s autonomy (specifically, suicidal wishes) is displayed.
• The idea of isolation, in regards to suicide, motivated by selfish reasons can be questioned.

The poem tells a story of two young friends vigorously tacking the mighty Rockies.”

• Youth, in this poem, is depicted as a time of hardship. The “innocence” and traditional “happy-go-lucky” theme attached to youthfulness is challenged by David, a young boy, having suicidal wishes.

Emotional Appeal

• This poem allows its readers to connect with David.
• Sentiment is avoided by avoiding heavy description about the death.
• There is power and taste in leaving facts about David’s death unknown. There are questions as to how David died.
• Birney allows the reader to become involved by allowing them to fill in the gaps to several aspects of the story.

Poem: “Because I Never Learned”

Poet: Patrick Lane

“Because I never learned how to be gentle and the country I lived in was hard with dead animals and men I didn’t question.”

• The country is described as “hard.” There are several definitions of the term “hard”:
  • not easily broken
  • requiring a great deal of endurance or effort; exhausting
  • not showing any sign of weakness; tough
  • unfeeling; callous

These definitions allude to the difficult trauma the author will endure in the future.

“And the small of my father’s back as he walked tall away.”

• The father leaves the son with satisfaction. He has successfully taught his son that selfless acts better the hard world he lives in. The father had no regrets. He was proud of his son for doing what the father considered good.

“Now twenty years later, I remember only:”

• The main character is haunted by his actions. The memory exists strong.
• This poem emphasizes the innocence, loyalty, and selflessness of the youth. The child could have left the kitten to suffer; he would not have suffered from the memory of crushing the kitten. However, this would leave the kitten in a state of suffering. The child committed a kind act instead of a selfish, unjust act for the sake of the kitten.

Emotional Appeal

• It is easy for readers to connect with the little boy in this poem.
• The feelings of the boy are well-described. The reader bears these feelings for the boy when reading this poem.

Poem: “The Onondaga Madonna”

Poet: Duncan Campbell Scott

“The latest promise of her nation’s doom.”

• The poet claims to know the nation’s destiny. Their fate is doom and they will vanish.
• The author has painted the home of the natives to be a war-zone. A land filled with a blood thirsty, weird and waning race.
• The line “And thrills with war and wilderness in her veins” suggests that their land is dry, hard, and thirsty. It suggests that the land thrives off of blood.

“The poet calls the Onondaga woman as a “tragic savage” with a “pagan passion.””

• This poem is a classic example of racialization. It is a thorough, stereotypical representation of North America’s Native peoples.
• The poet chose to represent her as a quintessence of a violent tribe.
• The Onondaga woman is an antithesis of the biblical Virgin Mary. The serenity and calmness of the virgin is replaced by a tragic savage in this poem. She is careless, rebellious, violent, and pagan. Her son is a harbinger of doom rather than the Savior.
• The poet encourages the cultural and social divide between the European settlers and the native peoples.
• The Onondaga woman features no European conceptions of female beauty.
• This poem is a white man’s perception of the black women.

“Paler than she her baby clings and lies.”

• The word “paler” suggests that her baby was half-white. Intermarriage was considered good for easing the native peoples into the immigrant, European society.

Intellectual Appeal

• This poem proposes that the reason for the downfall of the Indian nation is its mixing with Whites to form the Metis. The author describes the Metis as the “latest promise of her nation’s doom.”
• The line “weird and waning race” can be debated, is a judgement, and presents an issue.

Poem: “The Forsaken”

Poet: Duncan Campbell Scott

• The weather is often used to set the stage.

Phrases used in Part One (weather-related):

• “of a great storm”
• “the wild day”
• “millions of ice flakes”
• “hurled by the wind”
• “in the snow”

“She fights against the elements to survive and save her son.”

• Part One is loud; the wind howls and the huskies yelp.

Phrases used in Part Two (weather-related):

• “verge of winter”
• “of the twilight”
• “tranquil sunshine”
• “millions of snowflakes”
• “windless cloud”
• “frost of the dawn”
• “sight of the sun”
• Part Two is quiet; there is a silence deeper than silence. This is when the woman breathes her last fragile breath and succumbs to death.

The Forsaken tells the story of a woman who has been twice forsaken, once as a young mother and once as an old woman.

“The icy desolation of the setting in Part One is emphasized by the use of short phrases.”

• The coldness of the picture can be felt in the following lines:
  • “Crouched in the last hours of a great storm.”
  • “frozen and hungry”
  • “fished and caught nothing.”
  • “a lonely island.”
  • “hurled by the wind;”
• As an old grandmother, she gets left behind while traveling with her son and his family.
• The word “slunk” suggests the beginning of the death of the Aboriginal cultural. The Aboriginal peoples were feeling guilty about this traditional practice.

“Duncan Campbell Scott challenges the accepted, Chippewa practice of elder abandonment.”

• In Part One, the woman uses all of her strength to trek through the snow. In Part Two, the woman stoically composes herself and succumbs to her death.
• The woman is left behind when she is old because she has nothing more to offer. She is old and withered.
• The natives did not appreciate the life experience, wisdom, and advice of the elderly.

“The author points out the cultural demise seen in the Chippewa people. He portrays the corruption of their traditions.”

• In Part One, to survive, the woman used traditional tools such as a cedar bark line and rabbit bone hook to catch fish.
• In Part Two, the family used non-traditional tools such as kettles and mink-traps.

“This passage shows the transition of traditional Aboriginal ways to more civilized European ways.”

• The woman symbolizes the traditional Aboriginal culture. Through this poem, Scott tells the readers that the Aboriginal culture is going to die eventually.

Intellectual Appeal

• There is a striking parallelism between the two parts of the poem. Yet, there is a striking difference in the response of the woman between the two parts.
• The two separate parts are distinct but lead into each other.

Poem: “The Song My Paddle Sings”

Poet: E. Pauline Johnson

• The author describes the sighs and sounds while she paddles down the river in her canoe.
• This poem is about a person who goes sailing; there is no wind. As she takes down the sail and starts canoeing the water gets faster. Nature laughs at her.
  • In this poem, it is evident that the sailor respects nature and its instability.

“August is laughing across the sky.”

• The poet uses personification to make nature alive.
• Depicted in this poem is an intimate relationship between the woman and nature.

Sensuous Appeal

• Personification:
  • “August is laughing across the sky.”
• Repetition:
  • “Blow, blow!”
  • “Sleep, sleep!”
  • “Drift, drift,”
  • “Dip, dip,”
  • “Swirl, swirl!”
  • “Dash, dash,”
  • “Reel, reel,”
  • Hard consonants:
  • “They seethe and boil and bound and splash.”
• Alliteration:
  • “West wind,”
  • “I stow the sail and unship the mast:”
  • “paddle will lull”
  • “paddle is plying”
  • “far to forward”
  • “raced the rapids”

There is musical rhythm to this poem.

Poem: “The Skater”

Poet: Charles G.D. Roberts

“hills in the far white sky”

“wide white frost;”

“glimmering, ice-blue stream”

“pathway, smooth like glass,”

“wandering wind”

“Winter’s retinue rests in sleep.”

• At the beginning of the poem, the winter is inviting and welcoming.
• However, at the end of the poem, when the skater seems to have fallen, the environment becomes less inviting.

“And I turned and fled, like a soul pursued, from the white, inviolate solitude.”

Intellectual Appeal

• This poem has a regular, but complicated rhythm.
• The style of this poem allows the reader to pump along in a similar rhythm to vigorous skating.
• Each couplet stands alone but flows into the others.

Poem: “What Do I Remember of the Evacuation?”

Poet: Joy Kogawa

“Abandoning everything, leaving pets and possessions at gun point.”

• This shows the inhumanity and unrealistic nature of the opposing force.

“and I prayed to the God who loves all the children in his sight that I might be white.”

• To children, the solution to racial discrimination is not education, but a physical change.
• Joy desired not for others to accept her race, but to become the already accepted white race.

“Families were made to move in two hours abandoning everything, leaving pets and possessions at gun point.”

• This poem portrays what the young Japanese children, affected by the war, went through.
• This poem discusses the issue of racism, discrimination, and persecution of the Asians during World War Two.

“Six years old and I swear I saw a giant Gulliver of Gulliver’s Travels scanning the horizon”

• Joy felt as though the white people were overshadowing her family and herself.
• This poem represents the many children who felt inferior to the dominant white race in Canada.

Emotional Appeal

• Sentiment is avoided by avoiding heavy descriptions and details about the situation.
• The poem will have a smaller impact on those who haven’t experienced war.
• This poem allows the reader to relate to the child in the story.
• This poem elicits the emotions aroused by grief, tragedy, and unfairness.

Poem: “The Immigrants”

Poet: Margaret Atwood

“the inflected weather”

“the sky flat”

“the green fruit shrivels in the prairie sun”

“riding across an ocean of unknown land to an unknown land”

• The world that these immigrants travel through seems foreign, cold, drab, grey, and dull.
• These descriptions reinforce the idea of homelessness. There is no place of comfort, of happiness, or of safety. Their world is just a big map on which they keep on moving across.

“The immigrants have to create a new identity, because they cannot do the same things they did in their home country.”

• They expect to move to a country where they can better their quality of life.
• The politicians and society in general do not accept the newcomers.
  • “or the towns pass laws which declare them obsolete.”
  • “someone has noticed and wants to kill them;”
• The immigrants are forced to immigrate again.
• The immigrants realize that they shouldn’t have left their homeland.
  • “The old countries recede, become perfect,”
• The immigrants lose their ability to speak their native language.
  • “their tongues stumble among awkward teeth,”
• The immigrants are described as follows: too poor, smelling of vomit, infested, emaciated, and their skins grey with travel.
  • This horrid description suggests that this is what the Whites truly thought of the immigrants. This clearly shows the prominent issue of racism during this time period.

Sensuous Appeal

• There are many details and descriptions.
• The description of the land on which the immigrants would farm, was connected to the future of the immigrants.

Descriptions of the land:

• Sidewalks involved as palm lines (cracked),
• bricks exhausted and soft (worn out),
• the inflected weather,
• carve children and flocks out of wood,
• the sky flat,
• the green fruit shrivels in the prairie sun,
• across an ocean of unknown land to an unknown land.

Smells described in this poem:

• the deep lawn smells,
• smelling of vomit, infested, emaciated.
• There is a stark contrast between the goodness and vileness of the land. This goodness and vileness inevitably connects to the goodness and vileness of the people who live in this land.

Poem: “The Lonely Land”

Poet: A.J.M. Smith

“Smith writes about the untouched beauty of the Canadian landscape in this poem. This creation is natural.”

• The setting is dreary and harsh. It is described using terms and phrases such as: “jagged fir,” “sharp barbs,” “cloud-piled sky,” “the bay … windrift and thin,” “whirling sky,” “broken and wind-battered branch.”

“In stanza two, a duck begins to call. This duck call disturbs the dreary setting of stanza one, and reminds the reader of the natural beauty despite the dreary setting. However, the duck’s calls go unnoticed and are lost on the stones by the water’s edge. This creates a feeling of loneliness.”

• However, Smith immediately brings hope to the conflicting situation presented.
  • “This is the beauty of strength broken by strength and still strong.”

Sensuous Appeal

• The setting is vividly described in detail. The reader can imagine the dark weather and surroundings in the poem.

Repetition of soft consonants:

• Cedar and jagged fir,
• Bends the top of the pines.

Repetition of hard consonants (a strong use of explosive consonants):

• bay blown spume and windrift and thin, bitter spray snap,
• duck calls to her mate,
• stony strand, this smoky cry curdled over a black pine,
• wind battered branch.