Life-Cycle Bruce Dawe

Life-Cycle Bruce Dawe

Vocabulary

Beribboned: decorated with ribbons

Barracking: supporting a sports team, as at a match, shouting support

Carn: come on!

Hoisted: put up high

Empyrean: the highest heaven, the sky

Shrapnel: a hollow shell filled with small bullets that scatter upon explosion (so exploding like a bomb)

Rapture: extreme pleasure, bliss (connotation: attending one’s first game is so extraordinary that this exaggeration is justified)

Covenant: agreement (connotation: the covenant God made with Abraham in the old testament, so a commitment as serious as a religious faith)

Forswear: give up, renounce upon oath (a strong way to say “avoid”) (using such a strong word implies that commitment to a football team is a very serious one)

Race-memory: a memory inherited genetically, from one’s ancestors (connotation: often families members support the same team and being part of the family means supporting the same team, so it seems genetic, relates to identity)

Welter:an uproar, a state of confusion

Resurgent: coming back, recovering one’s former place (connotation: the fortunes of football teams always revive in the end, or so their supporters persist in believing)

Centaur: mythical figures that were half men, half horse (connation: football players are more than human, have super-human strength, like the centaurs)

Mythology: the collection of myths (surrounding the team/football code, in this case) (connation: religion)

Type of poem: free verse,no set pattern of rhyme or rhythm, stanzas are all three lines long. Like many free verse poems, this one makes use of enjambment to add emphasis and surprise, for example in the fourth and fifth stanzas: “like streamers/ in the pure flood of sound”, “a voice/ like the voice of God booms from the stands/ Oooh you bludger..”

Subject matter:

Following a particular football club is a life-time passion for Victorians. The poem traces the life-cycle of the fan from birth, through the first game, to old age, taking in milestones like marriage.

Point of view

The poem is related from the point of view of an observer of the rituals, not someone who is involved. This results in an ironic tone to the poem. The poet satirizes fanatical football followers who make their commitment to the team a big part of their lives.

Diction/ word choices

Much football related vocabulary (possession,League, one-point win, grand final, three quarter time, wind advantage), but mostly every-day English, suitable to the discussion of a common game; where more exalted language is used, it is used for satirical effect, because the poet’s invited reading is that these football fans take their allegiance too seriously. (See below re exaggeration)

Note also some use of vocabulary related to religion (voice of God, demons, saints, Heaven, covenant, salvation) suggesting that support of a football team is like a religious faith to some people. (Much use of connotation here)

Poetic devices

Alliteration: carn,cry; feebly, first, club-colours, cots; hoisted, high

These examples from the beginning of the poem serve to call attention to the links between the words.

Similes like “like innocent monsters” and “like the voice of God” both use exaggeration (or hyperbole) to satirize people who take their football so seriously. A comparison is made between the fan attending his/her first game and a monster who, like a fish swimming up a stream to spawn, experiences “rapture” as the crowd roars for the first time.The paradox “innocent monsters” also adds surprise and suggests that children change from innocent to monsters after they are initiated into fandom by attending their first match.

Other similes: like a race memory; like the maize god

Metaphor: the fan’s life-time devotion to the team is emphasised in the metaphors “the tides of life” and the parallel “tides of the home team’s fortunes”. The fan’s commitment means that they will always be experiencing excitement and suspense; the poet explains “it will always be three quarter time with the scores level and the wind advantage in the final term”.

Other metaphors: resurgent lions; centaur figures; the dancers changing but the dance always the same; their hope of salvation.

Sibilance: In “hearts, shrapnelled, surface, lost”the “s” sounds mimic the sound of a shell travelling through the air, linking to the metaphor of the “hearts shrapnelled with rapture”.

Motif: The “Life-Cycle” of the title is outlined the poem. The poem describes how children are born,(“wrapped in the club-colours”) come of age (“Hoisted shoulder high at their first league game”), court (“the reckless proposal after the one-point win”) and marry (“the wedding and honeymoon after the grand-final”), and grow old (“the elderly still loyally crying Carn... Carn..”) relating to their football team.The parallels the poem suggests of football club membership and key life events constitute repetition of a symbol; this motif is another way in which the poet suggests that allegiance to a football club is a key part of identity for fans.

Hyperbole/ exaggeration

There is a pattern of exaggeration in the poem, which is part of the satire. For example, attending the first game is described with exaggeration after exaggeration: “years swimming towards the daylight’s roaring empyrean” “hearts shrapnelled with rapture” “scarfed with light” “like the voice of God”. This state of extreme excitement is satirically punctured with the contrast of the vernacular language in “Oooh you bludger”. This contrast of sublime and mundane continues in the reference to “hot pies and potato crisps”, very ordinary but traditional football- game foods. The mixing of sound, feeling and sight images (“shrapnelled with rapture”, “break surface”, “rippling out like streamers in the pure flood of sound”)also adds to the comic effect, ridiculing the fans.

Allusion

“They will not grow old as those from more northern States grow old” is an allusion to the Anzac service reading “They will not grow old /as we who are left grow old/ ... at the going down of the sun/and in the morning/ we will remember them”, and is another suggestion that, for fans, football team allegiance is akin to religion and the awe in which the Anzac legend is held in Australia.

Themes/ invited reading

The poem reminds readers to keep their passions and past-times in perspective, suggesting that following a football team can become more like a religion than a simple past-time.

Just as the football fans make their team adherence a key part of their identity, other people can make any passion, their work, their games, their past-times, central to meaning in their lives, rather than a part of the whole.

Mood/ feeling of the poem: sarcastic, ironic at the expense of football fans, tongue-in-cheek, light, satirical

Australian identity: The poem’s denotative meaning is about the fanatical followers of Australian Rules football. There are specific references to the Australian accent “carn” and vernacular vocabulary (e.g bludger), customs like eating hot pies at a football match, and a legendary Australian footballer (Chicken Smallhorn). These local references do not exclude readers from other cultures, however, because Bruce Dawe is also satirising fanatical football fans in general, and people who are taking other leisure interests too seriously, and this occurs everywhere.

Thesis: Australian poetry denotes and connotes certain invited readings , related both to meaning and to nationality. The poem Life Cycle denotes the life cycle of a football fan. Simultaneously, it connotes the way a leisure activity or interest can become too important in a person’s life.