Leseprobe
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Abstract
Chapter I: Introduction
Chapter II: Poetics of Ross Donlon
Chapter III: Reminiscences of Childhood
Chapter IV: Personal Relationships
Chapter V: Textural Features of Ross Donlon’s Poetry
Chapter VI: Conclusion
Bibliography
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
It is my privilege and honour to express my sincere gratitude to Professor Dr. R.K. Singh for his guidance and supervision without which the present study would not have taken the shape it has. He has been a continuous source of help, and I would like to thank him for being patient with me, motivating me to overcome the difficulties and taking out time for me despite his busy schedule.
I express my heartiest thanks to the poet Ross Donlon for making available to me his poetry collections and other references for the study.
I am obliged to Dr. Ajit Kumar Behura, Head of the Department of Humanities and SocialSciences, ISM, Dhanbad, for his support and encouragement.
I am equally grateful to other faculty members Associate Professors Dr. M. Rahman and Dr. Rajni Singh, and Assistant Professors Dr. Aju Aravind and Dr. Nirban Manna for their active support and valuable advice from time to time.
I would also like to acknowledge the generous help I received from my friends Aditi Guria, Kanta Rao, Smrity Sonal, and Annu Bharti.
Finally, I owe my indebtedness and express my sincere gratitude to my parents Mr. Bhairo Kisku and Mrs. Chandmani Hansda, and my elder brothers Santosh Kisku and Dr. Antony Kisku for their blessings and motivation.
Place: ISM, Dhanbad
Date: May, 2014
SIMON KISKU
ABSTRACT
The present work focuses on a contextual study of Ross Donlon’s poetry. His poems not only excel in themes but also in the techniques. His poems are not overly knowing and sophisticated, over- intelligent, ironic or sardonic and hidden below a journalistic impersonal mind, but centre on the power of true feelings and try as best as is possible to name them.
Chapter I, “Introduction” traces the trends and patterns of recent Australian poetry. Here an attempt has been made to review the works of established poetic geniuses as well as that of the emerging talents, to observe the literary trends and traits in contemporary Australian poetry. It introduces the characteristic features of Ross Donlon’s poetry vis-a-vis the pastoral poetry and performance poetry.
Chapter II, “Poetics of Ross Donlon” deals with the contents and themes of Donlon’s poetry. We come to know of his preferences for poetry. The chapter focuses on the themes of his poetry.
Chapter III, “Reminiscences of Childhood” shows the use of memory element in his poetry. The poems have been dealt in the light of his memories of childhood. We come across his childhood experiences in this chapter.
Chapter IV, “Personal Relationships” focuses on the familial relationships and love relationship as well. Donlon defines relationship as a medium of establishing an identity.
Chapter V, “Textural Features of Ross Donlon’s poetry” studies the technical aspects of Donlon’s poetry. Most of his poems are, what has been called ‘found poems’ and ‘discontinuous narrative’ as far as familial relationship is concerned.
Chapter VI, “Conclusion” figures out Donlon as a good poet though not recognized yet. As a current Australian poet he too is international in outlook just as he seems to be imaginatively vital and exquisitely lyrical.
The study attempts to highlight the current poetry scene in Australia and the significance of a potent poet Ross Donlon who continues to be active with a reasonably good media presence in his own country as well as on the internet. The poet demonstrates a potential for wider recognition in the days to come.
CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
“Contemporary Australian poetry is such a rich field, and so unjustly neglected” writes Mike Ladd (Australian poet and radio presenter) in his article titled Contemporary Australian Poetry: An Introductory Sampler published on 6th May, 2013. He mentions a number of poetry collections and highlights the contemporary Australian Poetry scene.
He starts with the verse novel. He recommends The Scarring by Geoff Page (Hale and Iremonger), a powerful and disturbing tale set on a Clarence River farm between the 1920s and the 1980s. With its themes of fertility and sterility, this is no simple bush saga, but a disquieting and tragic weave of psychology and history. Set in a far more urban milieu and composed in free verse is the late Dorothy Porter’s The Monkey Mask (Hyland House). When it was first published in 1955 it reached the best- seller list in Australia, a rare feat for a book of poems. It’s a hard- edged crime thriller, a tale of sex and murder set in the Sydney literary scene. Not so much a verse novel as a sequence of poems, John Foulcher’s The Learning Curve (Brandl and Schlesinger) is a portrait of a fictitious secondary school. It’s a sharp, often hilarious and sometimes very touching. It’s great reading for teachers and students alike.
The pastoral continues to have a strong place in contemporary Australian poetry. Spring Forest (Angus and Robertson) by Geoffrey Lehmann is based on the memories of Ross McInerney, a farmer at Koorawatha on the western slopes of New South Wales. The name of Ross’s farm is Spring Forest, and the poems reflect the folk history of the area and Ross’s life on the land, as well as the intrusuions of a larger history. Written over a period of twenty years(it first appeared as Ross’s Poems in 1978) Spring Forest is really a single long poem brilliantly evoking a disappearing world. Laconic and conversational (because it is based on real conversations) it is also poignant and philosophical. If the A R edition with its marvelous old photographs is now out of print, most of the Spring Forest poems can be found in Lehmann’s Collected Poems (William Heinemann Australia)
Wheatlands(Fremantle Arts Centre) by John Kinsella and Dorothy Hewett, is a collaborative book of poetry and prose. Born forty years apart, the authors grew up in the same part of Western Australia, known as the Wheatbelt. While each poet writes about the same area, they see it from different gender viewpoints and generations. Dorothy Hewett’s vision has a more small- town, human scale, though embellished with her characteristic love of myth. Her realism is laced with capital “R” Romanticism. John Kinsella on the other hand, sees the humans in the landscape dwarfed by environmental degradation and the demands of agribusiness. Kinsella (as his other book reveal) is also more interested in linguistic innovation and in writing the ‘anti- pastoral pastoral.’ While talking about the contemporary pastoral, Ladd also recommends New Selected Poems (Duffy and Snellgrove) by Philip Hodgins, Broken Land- Five Days in Bre (Five Island Press) by Coral Hull, and New and Selected Poems (UQP) by Anthony Lawrence which contains his verse novella Blood Oath.
Les Murray is often thought of as a pastoral poet and it’s true many of his best poems are intimately connected with a life on the land, but a glance at his Collected Poems (Duffy and Snellgrove) will reveal that he is also very much a poet of towns and cities and highways. This is a big book in every sense and contains all the poetry Les Murray wants to preserve from 1961- 2002, excluding his verse novel Freddy Neptune. The book also comes with a CD of the poet reading fifty- five of his works. Les Murray’s writing has been compared to Walt Whitman’s in his desire to convert all he experiences to poetry, and in his long- lined, vigorous, onward- pushing rhythms, though Mike Ladd often think that the echoes are more Aboriginal than American. Murray pays close attention to details of the vernaculars and local names. Animals, places and objects are invested with totemic power. Injustices are railed against as Murray aggressively defends the battlers he feels close to, and history’s victims of tyranny. Like Judith Wright’s Collected Poems, this book stacks up to reveal a mighty lifetime’s work.
Mike Ladd also includes the names of a few of the recently deceased. John Forbes is such a case and Ladd considers him to be the best of the Australian poets who might lay claim to the category of “post modern poetry”. His Collected Poems (Brandl and Schlesinger) is a book full of irony, jokes, politics, pastiches of high and popular culture, put- downs and self- reference. Although he sespised anything that smacked of the bardic, he was a bit of a playful rhymer himself. Forbes seems to be deeply Australian poet. It’s partly his use of Australian idiom, brand names and places, partly the determinedly larrikin sense of humor, always deflating the grandest subjects.
Jennifer Maiden has written fifteen volumes of poetry, and one of Ladd’s favorites among them is Acoustic Shadow (Penguin) which not only contains the powerful title sequence about media manipulation during the first Gulf War, but the irreverent verse dialogue Guarding the Cenotaph. Ladd recommend it for this little gem alone.
The Language of Oysters (Craftsman House) is a large format hardback combining the poems of Robert Adamson and the black and white photographs of Juno Gemes. Adamson’s metaphysical and at the same time gritty lyrics of the Hawkesbury River, its people, animals and places, are beautifully matched by Gemes’s photographs which share the same qualities.
Peter Goldsworthy’s New Selected Poems (Duffy and Snellgrove) demonstrates his range, from the comic to the very dark, from chemistry and numbers to sport, philosophy and music, including songs from his opera libretti , Summer of the Seventeenth Doll and The Batavia.
A poet who is not so well known, but who deserves to be, is Patricia Irvine. Her debut collection Leaving the Mickey (Wakefield Press) contains some brilliant parodies as well as highly entertaining poems about her religious education and some beautifully accurate nature writing.
The poetry of migration and poets whose first language is not English is another important part of the contemporary scene. One of Ladd’s favorite collections is New and Selected Poems by Dimitris Tsaloumas (UQP). His poetry is like a cup of good Greek Coffee, pungent and strong and slightly bitter. The other collections in the same category are Moon Over Melboune by Ouyang Yu (Papyrus Publishing), Absence, New and Selected Poems by Antigone Kefala (Hale and Iremonger), and Fumigated by Iaona Petrescu (Ginninderra Press).
Some of the contemporary poets are especially good at bringing history to life- among them, John Millet’s Last Draft (Five Islands Press) which is a verse drama for voices from World War Two, in particular the RAAF. Botany Bay Document (Black Pepper) by Jordie Albiston recreates the lives of the first white female settlers in Australia with a unique style where the ballad collides with the documentary. Kembla Voices (Kemblawarra Press) by Conal Fitzpatrick is a poetic memorial to the victims of the Mt Kembla mining disaster of 1902.
Indigenous poetry is another rich seam in Australian Contemporary writing. Ladd recommends searching out the works of Jack Davis or Oodegroo Noonucccal and Story About Feeling (Magabala Books) by Bill Neidje. Land Window (UQP) by John Graham is a beautiful and sensitive book of poetic language finely attuned to the land, and Ali Cobby Eckermann’s ‘Little Bit Long Time’ (Picaro Press) provides a powerful emotional journey of reconnection to family.
In the end part of his Contemporary Australian Poetry: An Introductory Sampler, Ladd recommends two anthologies to acquaint oneself with the work of more contemporary Australian poets. Among them are New Music (Five Island Press) edited by John Leonard and The Best Australian Poetry series (both the Black Inc and the UQP versions)1.
Performance poetry continues to position itself in dynamic opposition to the established authority of print poetry, but it does not partake of the elitism of modernist or postmodernist avant- gardisdm. Instea, as a populist and democratic form, it courts a larger mainstream audience: the general public. The rhetoric is not about finding a way to bring readers back to poetry, but a way to bring poetry back to the prople. While sometimes nostalgic in its self- lineage in the oral roots of poetry, the increasing presence of poetry slams, and links with hip- hop and rap, make performance poetry more future- oriented in its alingnment with popular culture.2
These days a growing number of poets are not only using online technology to distribute and promote their work, they are also exploring digital media as a central part of the poetic experience. A small number of publications – including Les Murray’s Collected P o ems (Duffy Snellgrove, 2002) and literary journals Meanjin, G oing Down Swinging and others – have experimented with audio CD attachments to books. Discarding the book entirely, the CD ROM journal papertiger: new world poetry published annually by Paul Hardacre, Brett Dionysius and Marissa Newell is one of Australia’s chief forums for digital poems. Not only does it publish poems that employ conventional textual layouts, it also incorporates to great effect audio, flash and video poems. Especially popular with younger audiences, the trend is likely to continue to develop new territories that reach new audiences. But it is not by any means unidirectional: the Newcastle Poetry Prize issued its 2003 anthology on CD ROM but reverted to print the following year; and papertiger media expanded its operations in 2006 to add print to its CD ROM and Internet formats, suggesting that the poetry book, while somewhat harder to find, has not entirely disappeared from fashion.3
Judith Beveridge has published three books of poetry: The Domesticity of Giraffes (Black Lightening Press, 1987), Accidental Grace (UQP, 1996) and Wolf Notes (Giramondo, 2003). These three volumes have won Judith many of Australia’s major poetry awards including the Dame Mary Gilmore Award, the NSW Premier’s Award, the Victorian Premier’s Award, the Judith Wright Calanthe Poetry Prize and the Josephine Ulrick Poetry Prize. Central to Judith Beveridge’s poetry is an ongoing, modest but profound spiritual quest that steps beyond the fracture lines of national or cultural boundaries and moves toward a rich humanist vision of community and commonality.4
Tranter is one of the great stylists of Australian poetry, a disciplined perfectionist. Throughout his career, he has broken down and reconstructed his poetic, abandoning- with rigor and ironic detachment- his poetry to a constant state of revolution and reinvention. As a poet, he has produced some of the most influential and distinctive works in Australian poetry (poems such as ‘Lufthansa’, ‘Debby and Co.’ are classics)5.
Kevin Hart is internationally recognized as a poet, critic, philosopher and theologian. Critics have noted religious and philosophical themes in Hart’s poetry. As Toby Davidson writes, “Kevin Hart’s poetry cannot be separated from his multiple, enduring engagements with mysticism and mystical poetics. He is an innovator, suggesting new approaches to the mystical in the free facets of *attending*.”6
Adam Aitken is a professional poet, memoirist, academic and editor (with Kim Cheng Boey and Michelle Cahill) of Contemporary Asian Australian Poets (Puncher Wattmann 2013). He began writing in the mid-1970s and majored in English and Art Film History at the University of Sydney. He has also completed a Master's in linguistics and a doctorate in creative arts from the Centre for New Writing, University of Technology, Sydney. He was associate poetry editor for HEAT magazine. He has published three major collections in Australia and numerous poems in Australian literary journals. He is considered to be a poet of no particular school or trend, postmodern and lyrical at the same time. His influences range from the English Romantic to the French, American and British avante-garde, especially the New York School of poets. In 1996 his second poetry collection In One House was considered one of the best poetry collections of that year. In 2001, his third collection Romeo and Juliet in Subtitles, was shortlisted for the John Bray South Australian Literary Festival Award, and was runner-up for The Age Book of the Year poetry prize. His fourth collection, Eighth Habitation, was published by Giramondo Press in April 2009. His writing shows a deep interest in contemporary cultural issues, especially issues of identity and cultural hybridity. Adam's work has been translated into French, Swedish, German, Polish, Malay and Mandarin, and is published internationally, most notably in Poetry Magazine. 7
Geoff Page is a poet, reviewer and advocate for Australian poetry. Born in Grafton on the north coast of New South Wales, into a conservative and politically active family of graziers on the Clarence River, he was educated at the Armidale School and the University of New England 1958-1962. In 1959 he spent three months in National Service. Page moved to Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, in 1964, and taught English and History in Canberra schools. He was Head of the English Department at Narrabundah College from 1974 until his retirement in 2001.He has run monthly poetry readings in several successive cafés, most recently at The Gods Café and Bar at the Australian National University. His reviews of poetry in leading Australian newspapers, journals and on ABC Radio National have been important in promoting public awareness and understanding of Australian poetry Page, a significant voice in Australian poetry, who features in many anthologies, has published 18 collections of poetry, as well as four verse novels, since his first collection of The Question in the volume Two Poets was published by UQP in 1971. In addition he has written novels, criticism and plays as well as editing a number of anthologies, most recently his collection of essays and poems, 60 Classic Australian Poems (UNSW Press).8
Ross Donlon is one of the contemporary emerging Australian poet. His poems have been widely published in Australia, New Zealand and the USA. His works has been broadcast on Radio National’s poetica and community. Till now he has published five collections. They are: Tightrope Horizon (Five Islands Press, 2003 ), Shh and other love poems (Mark Time Books, 2009), My Ship (Mark Time Books, 2009), The Blue Dressing Gown (Profile Poetry, 2011) and The Awakening (Mark Time Books, 2014)9. His poetry is not very difficult to understand, but it is different from the general run of poetry making. He is honest in self- revelation as well as in revelation of the realities of human relationships around him. He sounds personal yet universal. His concepts, themes and experiences make him write personal, lyrical poems, but he becomes ‘different’ and remarkable as he defies the conventional norms of a lyric. The private and personal experiences of Ross Donlon becomes objective and impersonal. He makes his ‘I’ impersonal to reveal an egoless mind and to sound down- to- earth. He is an experimenter and does not like to stick to a particular trend of poetry writing. He has been successful in doing so. This makes his style unique. The variation in his style makes his poetry more interesting.
The dissertation seeks to do a contextual analysis of his poems with a view to placing him in perspective. It includes an exploration of his poetics, themes, diction and style.
Chapter II, “Poetics of Ross Donlon” deals with the contents and themes of Donlon’s poetry. We come to know of his preferences for poetry. The chapter focuses on the themes of his poetry.
Chapter III, “Reminiscences of childhood” shows the use of memory element in his poetry. The poems have been dealt in the light of his memories of childhood. We come across his childhood experiences in this chapter.
Chapter IV, “Personal relationships” focuses on the familial relationships and love relationship as well. Donlon defines relationship as a medium of establishing an identity.
Chapter V, “Textural features of Ross Donlon’s Poetry” studies the technical aspects of Donlon’s poetry. Most of his poems are, what has been called ‘found poems’ and becomes “discontinuous narrative” as far as in familial relationship is concerned.
Chapter VI, “Conclusion” figures out Donlon as a good poet though not recognized yet. As a current Australian poet he too is international in outlook just as he seems to be imaginatively vital and exquisitely lyrical.
REFERENCES
1. Ladd, Mike. Contemporary Australian Poetry: An Introductory Sampler. Web 12 May, 2014. (http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/poetica/contemporary-australian- poetry3a-an-introductory-sampler/4671444)
2. Web 12 May, 2014. http://www.academia.edu/2625183/State_of_Play_Australian_Poetry_and_Poetics_Now
3. Web 12 May, 2014. http://bronwynlea.com/2013/05/14/poetry-publishing-in-australia/
4. Web 12 May, 2014. http://redroomcompany.org/poet/judith-beveridge/
5. Web 12 May, 2014. http://redroomcompany.org/poet/john-tranter/
6. Web 12 May, 2014. http://redroomcompany.org/poet/kevin-hart/
7. Web 12 May, 2014. http://redroomcompany.org/poet/adam-aitken/
8. Web 12 May, 2014. http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=15215
9. Web 12 May, 2014. http://rossdonlon.com/
CHAPTER II POETICS OF ROSS DONLON
‘I'm shaping up the overall sense of the poems: your unflinching honesty really makes the book, I think, a little bombshell and, if I might say, quite outside the normal run of current poetry- making and with this I feel a natural accord: to write poems that are not overly knowing and sophisticated, over-intelligent, ironic or sardonic and hidden below a journalistic impersonal mind, but centre on the power of true feelings and try as best as is possible to name them. As Ted Hughes has said, "Maybe the reason we're so affected by this sort of poetry, when it’s genuine, is that we are starved of it, and now we really need it."’1
Paul Deaton’s comment on the launching of Ross Donlon’s The Blue Dressing Gown (2011) points to the genuineness of the poet’s poetry. It also points to the poet’s aesthetics. Ross Donlon’s poetry is not only not very difficult to understand, but it is also different from the general run of poetry- making. He is honest in self- revelation as well as in revelation of the realities of human relationships around him. He sounds personal and yet universal. His concepts, themes and experiences make him write personal, lyrical poems, but he becomes ‘different’ and remarkable as he defies the conventional norms of a lyric. The private and personal experiences of Ross Donlon becomes objective and impersonal. He makes his ‘I’ impersonal to reveal an egoless mind and to sound down-to-earth.
Memory becomes an important element in his lyrical experiences. It is his strong sense of the past, personal and individual with which he recalls the days of his childhood and various events to construct and re-construct his life and vision .He appears factual, intelligent and empathetic.
Personal relationship
As Louise Oxley notes: ‘Ross Donlon is a fine observer of human frailties. In these poems he leads us through the familiar sites where they often appear-- schoolyard, and dance-hall, bedroom and doctor’s room-- to the book’s heart: the tragedy of a father disintegrating in the aftermath of war. But whether grieving or poking fun, the poems in this book are beautifully restrained; full of tact, wisdom and tendernness.’2
Personal relaionships form an important part of Ross Donlon’s poetry. Most of the poems on personal relationship are concerned with his father. In his collection The Blue Dressing Gown, he has dedicated a whole section titled “Bill” to his father. He narrates the tragic experiences of his father that he had suffered after the second world war. His father could not return to him and his mother after the end of the war, nor could Ross ever got an opportunity to see him even once. The memories, as recollected, also portrays his own tragedy of a fatherless child. With soul-feeling, the poet seems to recognize the factors beyond his control, and never blames his father for gradually killing himself by indulging in alcoholism and for staying away from the family. As he writes in the poem ‘Return to the ferry hotel’:
“I couldn’t blame him for something I didn’t know. And
I didn’t know a lot of things.”3
Apparently, he did not blame his father, but still several questions keep rising in his mind:
“I wondered where he got the money for lodgings…
Why didn’t he go home to Kentucky? Was
he sick with something else he brought home from New Guinea? Had
he fought it?”4
Through the use of the letters, telegram and reports, he recreates facts objectively and gives a description of the death of his father. The use of those outdated means of communication distinguishes him from other lyrical poets for serving as ‘new’ images and turning ironical from the current perspective. In fact, he develops a sort of “discontinuous narrative” as he describes the death of his father. He remains simple, objective and factual. He treats death the same way as life and living; death as part of life. This helps Ross Donlon turn his personal experiences/ context objective and impersonal. For example, the description of his father’s death in ‘ Telegram from San Francisco 1951 ’:
“MAN ABOUT 34
BLUE EYES
ONE HUNDRED FIFTY ONE POUNDS
RED GREY HAIR
FIVE FEET EIGHT
DIED AT 90 EMBARCADERO
IDENTIFIED AS CHARLES WILSON DONLON
BY HOTEL CLERK”5
In poems like ‘ Telegram from San Francisco 1951 ’, ‘Reply Collect’, ‘ Coroner’s Report ’ etc., the poet makes use of available documents and converts them into a readable poetic form, very much as in ‘found poems’. There is yet another perspective that makes the poet different from other contemporary Australian poets. Donlon not only portrays the negative side of his father as irresponsible towards his family but also shows his other humane side which is positive. He shares the memory of his father’s concern for him and his mother as he talks about the trouble that he had to face after returning to San Francisco. His father’s concern for them and his troubles can be traced in the poem ‘ Letter on Embarcadero Y.M.C.A. Letterhead Dated 1948. Posted 1948 ’:
“I love you Peggy and always will
I want to see my Son
to help bring him up in this world
Peg do you want me now.
Im down Peg sick and lonesome but Ill come back up
For you and Ross Ive been through a thousand hells
Since I came to San Francisco
But Ive never stoped loving you and Ross”6
Bronwyn Lea rightly appreciates this aspect of the poet:
‘Writing with a warm and human touch: the father poems are a knockout. Just wonderful.’7
Other than his father, he has dedicated poems to his mother, grandfather, grandmother, daughters and grandchild.
Aesthetics in his poetry
Donlon’s poetic consciousness is much influenced by various art forms such as paintings, sculptures, music, poetry, etc. He uses images and symbols interpretatively, which is the mark of a genius. He creates verbal image of his own as he interprets his experiences of watching works of art such as paintings or listening to a piece of music. For example, the poem ‘The Scream’, which is based on the painting of the same title by Edvard Munch, he relates the celebrated image of the painting to his ninety years old mother’s scream. For Munch, the painting represents the universal anxiety of the modern man, but for Donlon, it is the image of a woman’s survival, with a sense of irony:
“I’m sorry,
And mean no disrespect
to the iconic image,
it’s just that The Scream,
that primal cry
by Edvard Munch,
always reminds me of the first time
I ever caught sight
of my ninety year old mother in bed
without her dentures.”8
The poet ironically compares Munch’s woman with his own mother without the dentures. In another poem ‘About Suffering’, based on the poem ‘Musée des Beaux Arts’ by W.H. Auden, Donlon talks about the world’s indifference to human suffering. Auden refers to the painting, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus by Bruegel. In Greek mythology, Icarus succeeded in flying, with the wings made by his father, using feathers secured with wax, and fell into the sea and drowned. The ploughman ignores his cry to be unimportant. As Auden writes in the poem:
“the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure;”9
Donlon, on the other hand, replaces Icarus with Saint Sebastian, who was an early Christian saint and martyr. It is said that he was killed during the Roman Emperor Diocletian’s persecution of Christians. He is commonly depicted in art and literature tied to a port or tree and shot with arrows. His plight remains unnoticed by the larger crowd. As Donlon writes in the poem:
“On clouds above, cherubs gambol while
relatives weep. St Sebastian’s chest is patterned prettily with darts
but Sebastian the martyr has gone.”10
Donlon’s description can also be related to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
“By the time nails go crunching in, the victim’s face
is in another place. Skyward rise the eyes and there’s almost a smile
as arms hang like a shroud.”11
There are a few other poems like ‘White Cockatoos’12, where Ross Donlon uses myths and imagery with interpretation.
Association with nature
Nature also plays an important role in Ross Donlon’s poetic creativity. He associates himself and human life with nature and its creatures. As a keen observer of nature, he turns anthropomorphic. For example, in the poem ‘Budgies’, he presents birds as his friends. He represents them as his guides and shows his intimacy with them:
“They taught me to be tender, their claws
clutching my fingers like small children
holding on as we might cross the road.
So when storms crashed or spreadeagled cat
slammed them back and forth in the dark
I was afraid for them, playmates of an only child.
I gave them love, names, and histories,
learnt about life and death - for some did die,
cold as cuttlefish on the sandy floor -
so their leaving was hard to understand.”13
In another poem ‘White Cockatoos’ he observes the activities of white cockatoos and compares them with the Sphinx of the myth of Oedipus:
“You wouldn’t want one
to fly into your chest and hold you,
sulphur crest cocked in your face
daring you to speak,
the way the Sphinx did to Oedipus.”14
Donlon seeks for peace and silence in the lap of nature. As he writes in another poem The Schooner:
“I slip the boat,
cool for a moment
by the schooner’s side. Water
laps the hull, spreads time
through light.
I push into silence
and a mirror sky.”15
With his preferences for brevity, concreteness and affinity with nature, he is drawn to the Japanese mode of haiku, and creates verses in 5/7/5 syllables stanzaic pattern. As in the poem ‘Watching the Sea Haiku’, which is based on the bronze sculpture Man Watching the Sea by Rick Amor, he gives us the picture of a man and the sea:
“Hands in his pockets
coat flapping against the rail
he sees the tide out.
By a winter tree
a man looks over the rail
as the sea watches.
Eyes blind to the view
he remembers one summer
a lifetime ago.”16
He also composes independent haiku which shows his awareness of the living moments of life:
“After that last dream
my former partner and I
went to counseling.”17
The poet’s excellence, however, lies in his experimentations in the Japanese form of poetry:
“He’s ripped her skirt/ her eyes/ are popping…
1, 2, 3. 1, 2, 3.
If Jude’s bra strap/ snaps now/ they’re cactus”
1, 2, 3. 1, 2, 3.18
Ross Donlon effectively creates momentness of a moment.
Poetry of love
Love is a major theme in Ross Donlon’s poetry. He recollects the memory of the time spent with his beloved in his poems. He presents sensuous images of physical relationship without being vulgar. Rather, he makes the physical body a means of the soul’s union. As he writes in the poem ‘Shh’:
“don’t kiss me yet
just rest your lips against my mouth
while I taste the fainest touch
of you.
But breathe me
while our senses scan the past
until we’re here
curves and angles resting comfortably
complex lives a perfect fit.”19
Likewise, in another poem ‘with her’, he highlights physical relationship as an important part in love and it is not restricted with the growth of the age:
“nearly sixty
yet we slide beneath the sheet
like children slipping beneath the first wave of summer
and it’s she who turns first
to fold her hair before it’s caught
as I turn to hold her
my palm floating across her back
pausing then stroking again
like soothing something young and wild
shifting her thigh across mine
kissing her lips like a kiss before sleep”20
A self proclaimed ‘reality wrestler’, dreamer, and minimalist21, Ross Donlon, despite being ‘Frankly Popular’22, has been awaiting recognition as a poet in his own country and overseas. With his range of poems—dark and light, comic and love, and exploratory, the poet registers a strong presence in contemporary Australian poetry scene. He writes skilled and well- crafted poetry with awareness of love, tenderness, relationship, worlds of nature, and music and fine arts. He is restrained, refined, perceptive, personal and passionate as he observes people, places and ideas, at times with a sense of detachment, or something beyond, seeking to connect with a larger society as well as with his own inner self.
Ross Donlon seems to unveil himself as much as to reveal the world around, interpreting his observations, thoughts, and ideas with a passionate naturalness. His images are interpretative of the inspiring sensuous frames— be it verbal, musical, visual or complex of personal relationships, especially father- son relationship that ingrain his poetic memory. Michael Sharkey seems right when he says: ‘His self- depreciation, understatement and human sympathy are combined with enviable tact throughout….’23 but, not without a subtle sense of humor or irony.
REFERENCES
1. Deaton, Paul: launching The Blue Dressing Gown, October 2011. Web 25 Mar 2014. http://rossdonlon.com/reviews.html.
2. Oxley, Louise. back cover of the book The Blue Dressing Gown
3. Donlon, Ross. The Blue Dressing Gown. New South Wales: Profile Poetry, 2011. p 61
4. Ibid, 57
5. Ibid, 48
6. Ibid, 40
7. Lea, Bronwyn. back cover of the book The Blue Dressing Gown
8. Donlon, Ross. unpublished collection Glass Air
9. Auden, W.H. ‘Musée des Beaux Arts’. Web 25 Mar 2014. http://english.emory.edu/classes/paintings&poems/auden.html.
10. Donlon, Ross. ‘About Suffering’. unpublished collection Glass Air
11. Ibid
12. Donlon, Ross. The Blue Dressing Gown. New South Wales: Profile Poetry, 2011. p. 14
13. Donlon, Ross. unpublished collection Glass Air.
14. Donlon, Ross. The Blue Dressing Gown. New South Wales: Profile Poetry, 2011.p. 14
15. Donlon, Ross. My Ship. Castlemaine: Mark Time Books, 2009.p. 2
16. Donlon, Ross. Awakening. . Castlemaine: Mark Time Books, 2014.p. 18
17. Ibid, ‘The Bridge Haiku’. 8
18. Ibid, ‘Ray and Judy’. 10, 11
19. Donlon, Ross. Shh and other love poems. Castlemaine: Mark Time Books, 2009. p. 4
20. Ibid, 6, 7
21. Donlon, Ross. ‘Bio’. The Blue Dressing Gown. New South Wales: Profile Poetry, 2011. p. 96
22. Ibid, p 87
23. Sharkey, Michael. back cover of the book The Blue Dressing Gown
CHAPTER III REMINISCENCES OF CHILDHOOD
The memories of childhood form an important part of Ross Donlon’s poetry. With the use of the childhood memories, he creates an image of painful experiences, and brings out the realities of human relationships. As his poems of father- son relationship shows, it was not his father alone who had to suffer but his family too had to face a hard time. He had never seen his father, nor could he identify himself without him. In his childhood days, his grandfather was the only company to him but he could not spend much time with him as he was always busy with his own work. Therefore, looking for a company, he makes birds as his playmate. Since his childhood only, he shows his affinity towards nature and its creatures and turns anthropomorphic. As he writes in the poem ‘Budgies’:
“They taught me to be tender, their claws
clutching my fingers like small children
holding on as we might cross the road.
So when storms crashed or a spreadeagled cat
Slammed them back and forth in the dark
I was afraid for them, playmates of an only child.
I gave them love, names, and histories,
learnt about life and death- for some did die,
cold as cuttlefish on the sandy floor-
so their leaving was hard to understand.
When the door from the cage banged open
in a southerly gale, their craze to flutter out
seemed disloyal. They blew away from home
shrilling, then dissolved into the waiting sky.”1
Here, the speaker is a matured person who recalls the days of his childhood when he was filled with loneliness and had no one in his company. The poem is in the form of a lyric and is in free verse. The title ‘Budgies’ define “They” in the poem. Budgies are small, long- tailed, seed- eating parrots found throughout the drier parts of Australia. They are popular pets around the world due to their small size, low cost, and ability to mimic human speech. In the poem, the budgies stand as a symbol representing the human qualities- tenderness, care, insecurity and freedom.
In the opening stanza, the speaker regards budgies to be his teacher and guide, teaching him the quality of tenderness and caring for him. He uses the simile in the line “their claws/ clutching my fingers like small children” which makes budgies appear as human beings. The speaker also shows his concern for them. As he writes:
“So when storms crashed or a spreadeagled cat
slammed them back and forth in the dark
I was afraid for them, playmates of an only child.”
Here, the cat stands as a symbol of threat to the budgies. The speaker shows his fate similar to that of the budgies feeling insecure in this world. In the last line of the stanza, the speaker reveals himself as an only child and friendless as well.
In the second stanza, the speaker shows his intimacy with the budgies giving them love, names, and histories. Here again, the budgies act as a teacher to him from whom he had learnt the experiences of life and death. Again the speaker uses the simile in the line “cold as cuttlefish on the sandy floor” to show the state of budgies in death. The stanza talks about the extinction of the budgies because of their vulnerability and it becomes hard for him to understand their leaving. The speaker identifies himself with the same condition as that of budgies.
In the final stanza, the speaker presents budgies as his pets kept in the cage unlike the first stanza where they were out of the cage. When they leave him moving out of the cage, he has a sense of loss as he is lonely again but at the same time, he feels happy for their freedom. The speaker too wants to have the same freedom since his life has been confined being an only child and fatherless as well.
The poem resembles the same situation which the poet himself had to go through during his childhood. Likewise, in another poem ‘Cicadas’, the speaker is found to be accompanied with insects as his playmates. As he writes:
“once we kept some in a cage
feeding them with boredom
watching as they tried to understand
the metal floor the sand and plastic swing
but found them in the morning on their backs
as though they’d crashed
while racing in the dark
feelers gesturing
bodies posed for photographs”2
A fatherless childhood
Donlon feels like a fatherless child as he could never get an opportunity to see his father even once. This becomes the most tragic part of his life. As Geoff Page writes:
‘…The pathos of the poet’s fatherless childhood (with only occasional postcards and unfulfilled promises of return) is painstakingly developed…’)3
Without his father, he could not identify himself. It is only through the relics of his father with which he tries identify him. As he writes in the poem ‘The Blue Dressing Gown’:
“It hung in my boy’s wardrobe,
an army regulation item
no one could throw out.
And it would be hard, wouldn’t it,
to discard the only thing left
in something like the shape of him.
It hung on a wire hanger,
skeleton of his shoulder
cutting across collar bone,
the drape of it swinging side to side
if nudged into a shy dance,
or if asked up by a breeze.
I used to wear it, with no sense
of feeling weird or spooky
alternating with a practical flannel,
yet at night sometimes woke
frightened by its doorway shadow,
a man hanging on the moon’s hook.
I never realized I’d outgrown him
walking tall through one summer
while his shoulders rode my back.
The tassels swung like incense
as I walked in his shape
trying to sense the being inside him.”4
The poem is in the form of a lyric and is in free verse. Here, the speaker is a matured person who recalls the days of his childhood when he was trying to visualize his father through his relics. The title ‘The Blue Dressing Gown’ defines “It” in the poem. The blue dressing gown is the military gown of his father. It serves as an important image in the poem reminding the speaker of his past. The blue dressing gown reminds him of the war and the troubles his family had to face after the war. It also reminds him of his father.
In the opening stanza, the speaker mentions that the blue dressing gown was an army regulation item which hung in his boy’s wardrobe and no one could throw it out. In the second stanza, the speaker gives the reason for not discarding the dressing gown of his father. He tells us that it was the only thing left which helps him imagine his father and thus it would be hard to discard it.
In the third stanza, the speaker tells us about the appearance of the dressing gown when it was hung on a wire hanger. He uses the metaphor in the line “skeleton of his shoulder/ cutting across collar bone” to compare the structure of the hanger, in which the gown was kept, to the physical structure of his father.
In the fourth stanza, the speaker tells us about the movement of the gown under the influence of a nudge or the breeze. Again he uses the metaphor in the line “if nudged into a shy dance” to compare the movement of the gown to a shy dance.
In the fifth stanza, the speaker recalls the days of his childhood when he used to wear it and the feeling he had while wearing it. He never felt strange or had a scary feeling of it. He used to wear it often substituting it with his regular clothes.
In the sixth stanza, the speaker tells us that yet sometimes he was frightened by the shadow of the gown formed under the influence of the moonlight. He uses the image of a man hanging on the moon’s hook to show the appearance of the shadow of the gown. The shadow of the gown looked as if it is the real shadow of a man.
In the seventh stanza, the speaker presents himself as an adult and he could never realize this transformation from a child to an adult. Now when he wore it one summer, he realized his own growth into an adult as the gown does not fit him.
In the final stanza, the speaker says that while he walked wearing the gown of his father, the tassels swung like incense and he was trying to sense the being inside him.
The speaker’s reflective tone intensifies his search for the father and to identify himself with him. Likewise, in another poem ‘The American’s Wallet’, the speaker tries to sense the physical touch of his father. As he writes in the poem:
“I sometimes hold it, like a hand
holding mine, like touching skin.”
He also uses letters, telegraph, reports, etc. to identify himself with his father. These are not only images in themselves but also what has been termed as ‘found poems’, the primary source cleverly converted into poems.
An observer of the neighbors and the changes after the world war
As a child, Donlon was a keen observer of the surrounding around him, the memories of which are still there at the back of his mind. He recalls in bits and pieces the ‘Change in Ashfield c. 1954’:
“Innocent racists of their day, my family
were alarmed and confused by the numbers
non- whites and strangers who jibber jabbered
in their own language- even outside the R.S.L.
yet loved the Greeks, Chris Nick, whose shop
was a blue Aegean cube on our street corner.
We admired how they made fruit blaze like ceramics,
how vegetables were displayed in carton theatres,
how exuberance and goodness glowed
like their skin, making shopping an excursion.
Mrs Wong we respected for her mystery and hours.
Milk splashes scribbled across the front window
were left to gather grime and be their own message
Crates and cartons stopped where they landed.
Electricity off, shop awning down, she deleted Ashfield,
but emerged, shuffling in blue satin, to condone purchases.
Not owning a car, some hot summer nights
meant a thirty minute walk, billy cans swinging,
to the Chinese on Liverpool Road to puzzle
over the window menu, too shy to eat inside,
then carry home their civilisation in layers
to warm over saucepans on our Kooka stove.
When an Espresso Bar opened, we stared in
at persimmon slashed walls, black lamps
and zebra stripped fittings. Italians stared back,
drinking from small cups. A machine hissed,
contraption almost strange as television,
beaming soundless from another window.
Americans in black and grey acted shadows there
before the enigma of a test pattern sent us home
past the signs changing above shop windows,
our fish ’n chip, the milk bars, an estate agent.”5
The title of the poem is very suggestive as it tells us about the changes after the second world war in his native place Ashfield, which was full of different people and activities. These include speakers of different ‘Englishes’, Chinese, Italians, Americans, Greeks and others that sought their future in the new land. Ashfield is shown to be a place of commercial activities in small shops, civilian and non- civilian offices, bars and restaurants, and other cultural remnants.
The poem is in the form of an unrhymed couplet. The speaker recalls his childhood days and the changes after the war, rather humorously and ironically. He is amazed at the coming of the new immigrants and his introduction to the new culture which he has never seen before. It would be appropriate to mention here that in the immediate aftermath of World War II, Ben Chifley, Prime Minister of Australia from 1945 to 1949, established the Federal Department of Immigration and thereby launched a large scale programme. Chifley commissioned a report on the subject which found that Australia was in urgent need of a larger population for the purposes of defence and development and it recommended a 1% annual increase in population through increased immigration. The first Minister for Immigration, Arthur Calwell, promoted mass immigration with the slogan “populate or perish”. People were sponsored by the International Refugee Organisation (IRO) from the end of World War II up to the end of 1954 to resettle in Australia from Europe- more than the number of convicts transported to Australia in the first 80 years after European settlement.6
Hence, in the poem there are references to people from multiple races and communities in Ashfield. The speaker sounds ironical in the very first couplet as he calls his family “Innocent racists”. His family was amazed at the arrival of the immigrants and they were confused and frightened to the extent they needed a secured position for survival in a community that comprised Americans, Italians, Chinese, Greeks and other islanders.
The speaker identifies the immigrants as non- whites and strangers who kept on talking in different tongues: they “jibber jabbered in their own language” and appeared annoying to him. The speaker sounds humorous when he tells us that they were speaking in their own language even outside R.S.L (Returned and Services League of Australia), which is a support organization for men and women who have served or were serving in the Australian Defence Force.7
The speaker says that although his family felt threatened by the immigrants, they loved the two Greeks named Chris and Nick who owned a vegetable and fruit shop at their street corner. The family admired the Greeks’ orderly display of fruit and vegetable, “making shopping an excursion” and feast to the eyes. The speaker also talks about their cheerfulness and goodness that glowed like their skin.
Then, the speaker also recalls a contrasting scene of a Chinese grocer named Mrs. Wong. His family was puzzled by her “mystery and hours”. The speaker becomes ironical when he mentions the dirt, the grime, and the things remaining in the place they were. Her shop was not clean unlike the shop of Chris and Nick. He humorously describes the condition of the shop, and time stopping there, with no effort to make things orderly:
“Electricity off, shop awning down, she deleted Ashfield,
but emerged in blue satin, to condone purchases.”
Mrs. Wong takes a break and closes her shop. The speaker uses the metaphor in the line “she deleted Ashfield” to compare it with the closure of the shop. After the break, she comes out again in a blue satin to carry on with her work.
The speaker tells us that as Mrs. Wong did not own a car, she had to go for a thirty minute walk during hot summer nights to reach her home, with cooking pots swinging in her hands.
The speaker uses subtle language to show his reluctance to accept the new migrants. In doing so, he uses irony again and again. He also uses humor at several places. He uses contrasting images as well. He is narrative, descriptive and reflective. The place Ashfield becomes an important image with which he tries to look for his identity.
As the speaker portrays Mrs. Wong, she appears to be a single lady, alone, possibly not feeling at home in Ashfield and reluctant. Now, she arrives at a restaurant. She is puzzled after looking at the food menu and feels shy to eat inside. Then she moves on.
Mrs. Wong finally reaches her home and starts preparing her dinner. Again, the speaker metaphorically says:
“then carry home their civilisation in layers
to warm over saucepans on our Kooka stove.”
Then, the speaker talks about the opening of a new bar named Espresso Bar. His family stares at the persimmon slashed walls, black lamps and zebra fittings. The Italians stared them back while drinking from small cups. Then, they heard the sound of a machine.
The speaker says that the machine appeared as strange as television to them and was soundless from the other window. The speaker introduces us to the coming of new technologies at that time.
The speaker refers to the Americans present in the bar, who looked like shadows in black and grey apparels there. Again, he creates irony here. His father was also an American and he could never see him. It’s only his shadow which he could see, formed by the gown of his father under the influence of moonlight. Thus, he compares those Americans to shadows. As he writes in the poem ‘The Blue Dressing Gown’:
“yet at night sometimes woke
frightened by its doorway shadow,
a man hanging on moon’s hook.”8
In the final couplet, the speaker points to the signboards above the shop windows. He could trace a new change in Ashfield with shop windows having signboards titled “our fish ’n chip”, “the milkbars”, “an estate agent”.
Likewise, in another poem ‘Chinese Neighbours- Ashfield c 1954’, the speaker observes the behavior of his Chinese neighbours. He becomes ironical here. The Chinese seem to be dominating his memory. He seems to be irritated with their presence. He doesn’t want to share the things with them on which the Australians have laboured. As he writes in the poem:
“They never mowed.
They never did edges,
They never pruned or cut back.”9
Thus, to conclude, Donlon faces the same situation as that of the new migrants. He feels insecure and threatened even at his mother’s homeland. Apparently, he has no sense of belonging to Ashfield as his father belonged to America. The irony is that though Donlon as a migrant is part of Ashfield, still he shows his reluctance to accept the new migrants there or perhaps, he wonders his identity as a native of Ashfield, because his father is American.
Donlon recreates and extends his own self, and searches his own identity as he looks around different people in the neighborhood or birds or insects. Watching different paintings or listening to musical pieces seems to become an extension of his own self, or a search of his own identity in a place where everyone he looks at seems an outsider.
REFERENCES
1. Donlon, Ross. unpublished collection Glass Air.
2. Donlon, Ross. , My Ship. Castlemaine: Mark Time Books, 2009.p. 24
3. Page, Geoff. The Canberra Times, November 2011. Web 30 Mar, 2014. ross donlon. com/ reviews. html.
4. Donlon, Ross. The Blue Dressing Gown. New South Wales: Profile Poetry, 2011.p. 55
5. Donlon, Ross. unpublished collection Glass Air
6. Web 06 Apr 2014. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-war_immigration_to_Australia.
7. Web 06 Apr 2014. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Returned_and_Services_League_of_Australia
8. Donlon, Ross. The Blue Dressing Gown. New South Wales: Profile Poetry, 2011.p. 55
9. Donlon, Ross. unpublished collection Glass Air
CHAPTER IV PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS
Relationships form an important part of Ross Donlon’s poetry. Relationships for him becomes a medium of establishing an identity. As discussed earlier, Donlon is much concerned with personal relationships and he seems to be more concerned with familial relationships. He is not only confined to father- son relationship, but also mentions husband- wife relationship, mother- son relationship, father- daughter relationship, etc. In one way or the other, all people in the family are in search of the father who defines all. Father becomes the core figure who defines everyone else’s identity. It is through him that everyone in the family belongs to each other. Past, present and future binds their identity together. He is also reflecting on relationship from other than father and son relationship. Despite being different in their narratives, the family becomes the part of the same process for the search of identity. Difference serves as a means for integration.
Husband- Wife relationship
Through his father’s letter written to his mother, Donlon portrays the nature of his father and the concern for his family. He shows his father to be dedicated to his family. He also makes us aware of his father’s situation after the war. Through those letters and postcards, he is able to give voice to his father. For example, his father becomes the speaker in the poem ‘ Happy Birthday Two Year Old Card 1947 ’:
“This Zebra says “HELLO” to you
Because he knows that
you are TWO-
He wishes “HAPPY BIRTHDAY” twice
And hopes the day is
sextra nice!
Your Daddy Bill
Over
Dearest Peggy and Son I’M only waiting
for my leave bonds
then Ill be on my way on Aussie Land.
with the money I get
and with the help of the Aussie Govt
I’ll be abel to make it. Gee Peg
I hope I can get work there.
I would like to start right away.
I haven’t wrote Peg
Because I thought some real good news
would come up
I wanted to send you a god letter for a change.
Well Sweetheart I hope you are well
And still with me
I wish I could send enough for the dog
you want for Ross
he s a real boy and needs a dog”1
Donlon’s father is optimistic about returning to his wife and son. He shows his love and concern for them. The poem is in the form of a postcard with a letter attached to it.
In the opening stanza, the speaker congratulates hi son on his second birthday. He points to a zebra drawn on the postcard, saying “Hello” to his son as he is two years old. And in the second stanza, he hopes that the day would be extra nice for him.
In the third stanza, he tells his wife and son that he is waiting for his leave bonds to expire and then he will be on his way to Australia.
In the fourth stanza, he is hopeful of returning to his wife and son. He says that with the help of the money he gets and with the help of Australian government, he would be able return to them. He hopes to get work in Australia and wishes to start right away.
In the fifth stanza, he gives the reason for not writing letters to his wife. He says that he thought that some real good news would come up and he wanted to send a good letter for a change.
In the final stanza, he calls his wife “Sweetheart” and hopes that she is well and still with him. Here, the speaker seems to be afraid that he may lose his wife, as he is unable to return to her. Then, he wishes that he could send enough money for the dog she wants to buy for Ross and ends the letter saying that Ross is a real boy and needs a dog.
Mother- Son relationship
It is only through Donlon’s grandmother that we come to know of the real situation of his father. She is worried about her son. She tells Donlon’s mother about the hard time that his father had to face after returning to San Francisco:
“he said he working a little
but hadn’t make enough to live on
he said the only way he can go to Australia
is pay full fare and he cant save anything
he said he tried the Red Cross
also the Veteran Bureau he also tried
to get in the Seamans Uniion
he said they wont let him work”2
Donlon’s father tried his best to make his way to Australia but his fate did not favor him. He was unable to get any work and could not make money. His grandmother gives the reason behind his father’s return to San Francisco. She wanted to help him but she was helpless:
“I wish he never came home
he should of stayed with you
but I guess he did not know what to do
after his brother was gone
and his father almost got killed
but thank god he is still alive”3
His grandmother accepts the truth and tells his daughter- in- law about the reality of her husband and asks her to come to them if she wishes:
“but Peggy he wont be able to work
no more he had a good job
now if he was still working there
and he could get a loan we would send it
to Wilson the way iit I we aint got any money
what we did have went for sickness
the only thing we got is a place to live
and you are welcome to come
to the United States if you want to”4
She is restless about his son’s situation. She is worried all the time:
“I stay awake all night worry
about everything going wrong”5
Brother- Sister relationship
The sister of Donlon’s father has the same feeling as that of his grandmother. She only informs his mother about his father’s death. She gives a detailed description of the disappearance and the death of his father, as found from a letter:
“we got word Aug 7,
from the coroner in San Francisco
he was found dead in hotel room.
He has been in San Francisco
Since Feb. 13- 1946
and we have
never seen him since…
We brought him home for burial
3,000 miles.
He was buried in Zachery Taylor Cemetery, Louisville.”6
She also tells Donlon’s mother about her brother’s condition and feels pity for him:
“he was trying to get to you
but he had bad luck
he could not get to you.
all he thought of was you
and his son…
He was not working
and must have been in a bad fix
he did not look like himself at all.
My mother and father
feels terrible about this”7
Donlon’s grandmother and aunt are the only two members in his family (as mentioned in his poems) who witness the degeneration of his family. We can rely on them as they had themselves seen his father’s condition. The poet effectively converts the contents of the letter and telegram into poems.
Father- Daughter relationship
Though Donlon never received the love of his father and never had his company, he stands out to be a good father. He knows what it means to be a fatherless child. He shows his love for his two daughters. As he writes in the poem ‘Father and Daughters’:
“Sail flicks.
Slow sea rolls.
baby buddhas in bonnets
squar at the water’s edge.
The dad stands forth in froth.
their bellies bump his colossal knees
on guard against everything;
bugs and bluebottles,
beady sea things,
boys,
the tightrope horizon,
Antartica.
So they are safe
in the harbour of his love.
Then one of the splashing bonnets cries,
Take me deeper, Dadda, take me deeper.”8
Here the speaker is a father playing with his two daughters. He stands as a protector to his daughters. The children are busy playing without any fear in the company of his father. Donlon defines father as a protector to his children, possibly because his own childhood was full of fear and insecurity without his father.
In another poem ‘the good father and his daughter kiss’, he maintains a distance from his daughter when she grows young. He knows the value of a relationship and how it is to be maintained. As he writes:
“now he makes sure,
hips don’t touch
hands are placed on shoulders
just so
and lips kiss
one centimeter left
of lips”9
Poem for his unborn granddaughter
Donlon shows his affection for children in his poems. He can even feel the activities of his unborn granddaughter. His imagination is not limited and he can create poetry out of anything. As he writes in the poem ‘Rose’:
“Codes and letters line the scan
of you at seven weeks, six days.
Darker than a nightclub,
a semi sweep of light swings
across your mother’s womb,
flickers on tucked up head and toes,
Girl Gulliver, floating gravity free on a nine month space odyssey.
Belly an equator, poles turning and revolving on your own axis,
you orbit in time with a lifeline secured to the universe.
No wonder you seem to smile from this one person planet.
In a dark, wild world
pushing with blood, you’re held
cradled in a half circle joined like hands, like rose opening.”10
The poem is in the form of an unrhymed couplet. The speaker is talking about his unborn granddaughter who is seven weeks, six days old. He portrays the picture of its mother’s womb. The darkness inside her womb is even darker than a nightclub. The child flickers on tucked up head and toes. He refers to his granddaughter as “Girl Gulliver”, who is floating free on a nine month odyssey. He uses the metaphor “space odyssey” to compare it with the life of the child in the womb. He compares the belly to an equator, with poles turning and revolving on child’s axis. Her orbit in time with a lifeline is secured to the universe. The child seems to smile from one person planet, which is the mother’s womb. The speaker considers the mother’s womb to be a dark and wild world pulsing with blood. The child is cradled in a half circle joined like hands which gives the picture of a rose opening.
Poem for his grandfather
During his childhood days, Donlon’s grandfather was the only company to him but he could hardly spend time with him as he was an engine driver and all the time busy with his own works. On the occasions when he was free, he used to take him out. He was an inspiring person for him. As he writes in the poem ‘The Poem Cloak’:
“Walking out, he swung me to the top of his head,
perching me there to be higher than rooftops
and wove in that moment the cloak of a poem
that still flows from my back, streaming with words.”11
His grandfather inspired him to lead a life which is not ordinary. He wanted him to be higher than rooftops. He remembers that particular moment and it is still there at the back of his mind.
Love relationship
Donlon deals with familial relationships as a quest for identity. This continues even in his poems of love. Through love relationship, he unveils himself. He is honest in self- revelation. He reveals about himself that he has been in a physical relationship with so many women. He turns bold in his treatment of love, which is not devoid of eroticism. While love poems necessarily involve poems of the feelings of affection, erotic poems express sexual passion or desire. It is also a fact that the two categories overlap. To quote I.F. Moulton, ‘many love poems are erotic, and many erotic poems deal with affection or strong feeling.’12 He effectively focuses on physical aspects of love and sexual passion, offering sensuous imagery without being vulgar. At places, he is explicit and yet suggestive. He makes the physical body a means of the soul’s union. As he writes in the poem ‘You’:
“As I grow older, when I think of the women
whose lives joined mine,
I mean no disrespect to say
they may be more than I remember.
I think I know them all
but then a face returns smiling Hi
through a closing window of my memory.
She comes pushing back her hair
looking for where I might be
this first morning, still wearing the look
I glimpsed the moment we left ourselves
and entered each other.
So how lovely to find you here, just now,
leaning on the frame of the kitchen door,
robe half around you and smiling,
last night’s cup dangling on one finger,
looking for our day’s first brew.”13
The poem is in the poem of a lyric. The speaker is an old man and as he grows older, he is trying to recall all the women who had been a part of his life. He means no disrespect in saying that the number of women that came in his life may be more than he remembers.
In the second stanza, he thinks that he knows all of them but then he visualizes a smiling face in his mind, probably the one who got closer to him. He uses the metaphor “closing window” to point to his waning age and fading memory. He remembers how she came pushing back her hair looking for him just the next morning after their sexual intercourse. She seems to be emotionally attached to him after the act. He glimpses the moment when they both entered into the sexual relationship with each other.
In the final stanza, he feels lovely to find her leaning on the frame of the kitchen door,, robe half around her and smiling. He too seems to be emotionally attached with her. Probably this is the reason he still remembers her face.
The last two lines describe their entry into the sexual intercourse for the second time. With the union of their bodies, they are spiritually awakened. As he writes:
“last night’s cup dangling on one finger,
looking for our day’s first brew.”
The use of the expression “our day’s first brew” points to a heightened moment in experience and expression of love, the impact of the moment itself.
The poet excels in his imaginative expression of intimate love. In the poem ‘with her’, he shares his sexual experience even at the advanced age and “nearly sixty”. Sex becomes only a physical delight at its intensest for him. As he writes:
“pausing then stroking again
like soothing something young and wild
shifting her thigh across mine
kissing her lips like a kiss before sleep”14
Donlon shows his passion for sex. Here he treats sex as a source of physical pleasure only without any emotional commitment. In other sensual poems, for example ‘one fine night’, ‘We’, ‘Shh’, he demonstrates his skill in use of ars poetica and truth and pleasure drawn from erotic self- expression. He presents some memorable metaphors that tell the more, the more they do not tell.
To conclude, Donlon values familial relationships. He is tolerant to all the relationships. That’s why he never turns critical against them. Not only he is trying to establish his identity with his father, but he also gives identity to other family members despite differences. He unveils their own different personalities. In the case of love relationship, he delightfully focuses on the physical aspects. Women for him become a source of physical delight.
REFERENCES
1. Donlon, Ross. The Blue Dressing Gown. New South Wales: Profile Poetry, 2011. pp 38, 39
2. Ibid, ‘ Letter fom Mary Hyland Donlon 1946 ’, 34
3. Ibid, 35
4. Ibid
5. Ibid, 36
6. Ibid, ‘ Letter from Louisville ’, 45
7. Ibid, 45, 46
8. Donlon, Ross. My Ship. Castlemaine: Mark Time Books, 2009.p. 5
9. Ibid, 6
10. Donlon, Ross. unpublished collection Glass Air
11. Ibid
12. Greene, Roland, Stephen Cushman, and others, eds. ‘‘Erotic poetry’’. The Princeton Encyclopedia of poetry and poetics. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2012. p. 455
13. Donlon, Ross. unpublished collection Glass Air
14. Donlon, Ross. Shh and other love poems. Castlemaine: Mark Time Books, 2009. p. 7
CHAPTER V TEXTURAL FEATURES OF ROSS DONLON’S POETRY
“When it comes to poetry, quality and reader accessibility don’t go together as often as they might, many poems are difficult by definition and require a lot of unpacking. But the appeal of Ross Donlon’s poems lies in the combination of technical skills with unusual lucidity. Donlon is interested in the many refined techniques of poetry but not at the expense of storytelling or straightforward emotion.”1
Donlon’s poems are mostly lyric marked with brevity. He appears experimental in that, being subjective, he becomes objective too. He makes his ‘I’ impersonal to reveal an egoless mind and sound down- to- earth. He successfully uses the letters, telegram, reports and other formal documents for found poems. He creates new images out of those sources and develops a sort of “discontinuous narrative”.
Humour and Irony
Donlon uses verbal devices to create humour and irony in his poetry which makes it more interesting. He knows how to create his impact on the audience. For example, in the poem ‘Bio’, he turns humorous thus:
“He has degrees in dreaming,
First Class Honours in fantasy
post graduate work in wondering.
His master’s research into Why
has recently been expanded and upgraded into a PhD incorporating
Why Not?
He has been highly commended for not entering poetry competitions both national and those of small country towns.
He has been forcibly rejected by some of the finest literary magazines in the country,
including Northerly, Southerly, Easterly, Westerly
and Meanjin.”2
The irony lies in his being self- deprecating here. He creates humour while talking about his degrees pointing to his poetry. He becomes ironical when he says that he was highly recommended not to become a poet, and now he is turning out to be a successful poet.
He matches the Indian English poet Nissim Ezekiel in the creation of humour and irony. Donlon’s ‘Celebration of Something’ sounds similar to that of Ezekiel’s ‘Goodbye party for Miss Pushpa’. As Ezekiel writes in ‘Goodbye party for Miss Pushpa T. S.’:
“Miss Pushpa is coming
from very high family.
Her father was renowned advocate
in Bulsar or Surat
I am not remembering now which place.
Surat? Ah, yes,
once only I stayed in Surat
with family members
of my uncle’s very old friend-
his wife was cooking nicely…
that was long time ago.”3
Here he is making gentle fun of the people who cannot speak English properly by including in the poem common mistakes made by speakers whose mother tongue is not English. There are grammatical mistakes, strange arrangement of words and phrases and idioms which are direct translations of expressions in Indian languages- they all sound very old in English.
Donlon, on the other hand, mocks at the behaviour of the people present in the ceremony in ‘Celebration of Something’. As he writes:
“The opening ceremony was amazing, fantastic, unbelievable.
Organisation was amazing, fantastic, unbelievable.
Contestants and performers were amazing, fantastic, unbelievable. Household names shone like whitegods, celebrities glittered like gods. (Although someone spotted someone’s someone doing something they shouldn’t with someone else. They were boiled alive next day in the tabloids.) Amazing, Fantastic, Unbelievable.”4
Imagery
Donlon does not restrict himself to create images out of his life experiences, surrounding and ordinary things only. He shows his uniqueness in creating images out of letters, postcard, telegraph and other formal documents. He draws much of his poetry from the various art forms like painting, sculpture and musical pieces. He creates images to match the images he observes in the works of arts or whatever he observes. He becomes interpretative besides developing his own image. He identifies himself with the celebrated artists such as E Philips Fox, RW Sturgess and Shona Nunan. He appreciates and recreates various works with interpretation while observing. His images are appealing, interpretative and turn universal. For example, in the poem ‘Reconciliation’, which is based on the painting Reconciliation by Tom Roberts, He gives his own meaning to the painting and develops a story of two lovers. The painting seems to show the reunion between two lovers after some quarrel. But Donlon interprets it in his own way and shows woman’s disinterest in the reconciliation. As he writes:
“His eyes are willing her to see,
but she avoids them, unconvinced.
His one hand holds her shoulder,
hers stops him as he tries
to turn her into him.”5
Likewise in another poem ‘The Scream’, which is based on the painting of the same title by Edvard Munch, he relates the celebrated image of the painting to his ninety years old mother’s scream. For Munch, the painting represents the universal anxiety of the modern man, but for Donlon, it is the image of a woman’s survival, with a sense of irony:
“I’m sorry
And mean no disrespect
to the iconic image,
it’s just that The Scream
that primal cry
by Edvard Munch,
always reminds me
of the first time
I ever caught sight
of my ninety year old mother
in bed
without her dentures.”6
The poet ironically compares Munch’s woman with his own mother without the dentures.
In another poem ‘the good father and his daughter kiss’, he compares his life with that of a ship and make it look alike. As he writes:
“when he was the boat she sailed in
harbour to safe harbour
now he makes sure
hips don’t touch
hands are placed on shoulders
just so
and lips kiss
one centimetre left
of lips”7
Like the distance is to be maintained between two ships so that they may not collide with each other, in the same way Donlon shows that a distance should be maintained in a relationship to carry it out in a better way. The image of the ship become universal and appeals to the reader. It is effective as well.
In his recent published collection Awakening, he switches over to haiku poems. He is drawn to the Japanese mode of haiku, and creates verses in 5/7/5 syllables stanzaic pattern. Haiku poems are more suitable for his poetry as he prefers brevity and image- making. Through haiku poems, he creates images out of a particular moment of the past. The unique thing is that he writes haiku poems after paintings and sculptures, thus creating images which leaves impact on the readers. His excellence lies in his experimentation in the Japanese form of poetry. He also composes independent haiku which shows his awareness of the living moments of life. As he writes in the poem ‘The Bridge Haiku’:
“After that last dream
my former partner and I
went to counseling.”8
Language, tone, meter and style
Donlon uses simple words in his poetry but he arranges the in such an order that creates effective images which is interpretative as well. As he writes in the poem ‘In Praise of Washing’:
“I like the sound
of a machine washing,
the pulse and hum,
the snoring slosh,
the steady beat,
the butterfly murmur
of something being done,
the clack
of a completed cycle.”9
Through his arrangement of words, he creates audible effect on the audience and makes the simple act of washing sound pleasurable to the ears.
Talking about his tone, he is never loud or low, rather he is humorous or ironic. His poetry has a pleasurable effect on the readers. He never flows out of his emotions, getting very angry or happy. He is very objective.
Moving away from the traditional use of meters like iambic pentameter, he prefers free verse for his poetry. But he uses alliteration at some places. As in the poem ‘Change in Ashfield c. 1954’, he employs it:
“non- whites and strangers who jibber jabbered”10
Likewise, he uses it in another poem ‘Celebration of Something’:
“The opening ceremony was amazing, fantastic, unbelievable.
Organisation was amazing, fantastic, unbelievable.
Contestants and performers were amazing, fantastic, unbelievable.”11
He is an experimenter and does not like to stick to a particular trend of poetry writing. He has been successful in doing so. This makes his style unique. The variation in his style makes his poetry more interesting. As in the collection The Blue Dressing Gown, he is not linear in narrating the story of his father. Everything is scattered at different places which makes his poetry a “discontinuous narrative”. He leaves it on the readers to arrange it in a linear way. In the process, he converts the letters, telegram and other formal documents into poetry by just changing the punctuation marks.
To conclude, Donlon is a good observer and that makes his poetry good. His poetry has a newness in it which makes it worth reading. His experiments with the poetry turn out to be successful.
REFERENCES
1. Kerryn Goldsworthy, Sydney Morning Herald, Spectrum, December 2011, Web 04 May 2014. ross donlon. com/ reviews. html.
2. Donlon, Ross. The Blue Dressing Gown. New South Wales: Profile Poetry, 2011. p. 96
3. Web 04 May 2014. www.english- for- students. Com/ Goodbye party: html.
4. Donlon, Ross. The Blue Dressing Gown. New South Wales: Profile Poetry, 2011. p. 88
5. Donlon, Ross. Awakening. Castlemaine: Mark Time Books, 2014. p. 12
6. Donlon, Ross. ‘The Scream’. unpublished collection Glass Air
7. Donlon, Ross. My Ship. Castlemaine: Mark Time Books, 2009. p. 6
8. Donlon, Ross. Awakening. Castlemaine: Mark Time Books, 2014. p. 8
9. Donlon, Ross. The Blue Dressing Gown. New South Wales: Profile Poetry, 2011. p. 89
10. Donlon, Ross. unpublished collection Glass Air
11. Donlon, Ross. The Blue Dressing Gown. New South Wales: Profile Poetry, 2011. p. 88
CHAPTER VI CONCLUSION
Ross Donlon is part of the emerging poetry sub- culture in Australia. As a current Australian poet he too is international in outlook just as he seems to be imaginatively vital and exquisitely lyrical. As the study of his five collections show he is rich, clear and lucid. Besides being cosmopolitan he is visually strong, experimental and innovative. Like Max Harris he seeks to weld art and literature, and his erotic poems remind one of the celebrated A.D. Hope, to whom love was ‘religious mystery’ and sex is ‘sacrament’, to quote Mark O’Connor.1
Ross has love depth, travel, paintings, musical compositions, relationships and passion as his subjects but main source of his energy in his poetry is sexual. His intense poetic search of father- son relationship presents a mood of passive recollection which tells of an adult life shaken by uncertainties and decay, people met and lost, and consolation in nature. His rumination is essentially a search for the masts he can use to dramatise his life and identity. He narrates his environment as a backdrop to act out a ritualized search for experience made meaningful in poetic terms, possibly similar to Robert Adamson’s Where I come from (1980).2
A self proclaimed ‘reality wrestler’, dreamer and minimalist3, Ross Donlon, despite being ‘Frankly Popular’4, has been awaiting recognition as a poet in his own country and overseas. With his range of poems- dark and light, comic and love, and exploratory, the poet registers a strong presence in contemporary Australian poetry scene. He writes skilled and well- crafted poetry with awareness of love, tenderness, relationship, worlds of nature, and music and fine arts. He is restrained, refined, perceptive, personal and passionate as he observes people, places and ideas, at times with a sense of detachment, or something beyond, seeking to connect with a larger society as well as with his own inner self.
He seems to unveil himself as much as to reveal the world around, interpreting his observations, thoughts, and ideas with a passionate naturalness. His images are interpretative of his inspiring sensuous frames- be it verbal, musical, visual or complex of personal relationships, especially father- son relationship that ingrain his poetic memory. Michael Sharkey seems right when he says: ‘His self- deprecation, understatement and human sympathy are combined with enviable tact throughout….’5
He recreates and extends his own self, and searches his own identity as he looks around different people in the neighborhood or birds or insects. Watching different paintings or listening to musical pieces seems to become an extension of his own self, or a search of his own identity in a place where everyone he looks at seems an outsider.
He values familial relationships. He is tolerant to all the relationships. That’s why he never turns critical against them. Not only he is trying to establish his identity with his father, but he also gives identity to other family members despite differences. He unveils their own different personalities. In the case of love relationship, he delightfully focuses on the physical aspects. Women for him become a source of physical delight.
He is a good observer and that makes his poetry good. His poetry has a newness in it which makes it worth reading. His experiments with the poetry turn out to be successful.
During my interaction with him through mails he answered to my question “Where do you place yourself among old and contemporary Australian poets?” in the following words: “I’ve never really asked myself that question, but I read many of the Australian poets of yesteryear in school and enjoyed them- Judith Wright more than most. But really I am most influenced by the ‘canon’ of European and American poets- the ‘beats’ when I was teenager along with T.S. Eliot and Dylan Thomas, Sylvia Plath- to a lesser degree Yeats. Coming back to poetry later it was nearly all Americans- Raymond Carver, Billy Collins, et al. Ted Hughes’s ‘birthday letters’ helped me with The Blue Dressing Gown …among those writing in Australia- Ian McBryde, Lauren Williams, Dorothy Porter and Less Murray. I see myself as being a contemporary poet mostly influenced by modern American poetry but certainly NOT a so- called ‘Language’ poet i.e. more concerned with experiments with language…”
Donlon said that he likes kerryn Goldworthy’s comment on The Blue Dressing Gown very much: ‘When it comes to poetry, quality and reader accessibility don't go together as often as they might; many poems are difficult by definition and require a lot of unpacking. But the appeal of Ross Donlon's poems lies in the combination of technical skills with unusual lucidity. Donlon is interested in the many refined techniques of poetry but not at the expense of storytelling or straightforward emotion.
‘The poems are loosely grouped into five sections and all have strong points. The most compelling is the second section, "Bill", an autobiographical suite of poems containing the title poem, which is about an empty garment and tells the tale of Donlon's parents and their trans-Pacific wartime marriage. It's a tragic story in its own right and it brings to mind the many personal tragedies that must have followed in the wake of that war, or any other.’6
The dissertation has covered all the important aspects of Ross Donlon’s poetry, making an attempt to prove that his poetry worth reading and bringing him into the light so that his hard work may be appreciated for its good quality.
REFERENCES
1. Web. 11 May, 2014. http://australia.gov.au/about-australia/australian-story/modern-austn- poetry
2. Adamson, Robert. WHERE I COME FROM. Big- Smoke Books, 1979.
3. Donlon, Ross. ‘Bio’, The Blue Dressing Gown, New South Wales: Profile Poetry, 2011. p. 96
4. Ibid, 87
5. Sharkey, Michael. back cover of the book The Blue Dressing Gown
6. Kerryn Goldsworthy, Sydney Morning Herald, Spectrum, December 2011. Web 11 May, 2014. http://rossdonlon.com/reviews.html
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Abrams, M.H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. New Delhi: Macmillan India Ltd. 1978. Print
2. Birns, Nicholas and Rebecca McNeer (eds). A Companion to Australian Literature Since 1900. Columbia: Camden House, 2007. Print
3. Greene, Roland, Stephen Cushman, and others, eds. ‘‘Erotic poetry’’. The Princeton Encyclopedia of poetry and poetics. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2012. p. 455
4. https://www.academia.edu/6135372/Writing_a_Literature_Review
5. http://australia.gov.au/about-australia/australian-story/modern-austn-poetry
5. http://www.bigbridge.org/issue9/poetryanderoticism.htm
6. http://www.bostonreview.net/poetry/drew-gardner-flarf-life-poetry-affect
7. http://dspace.flinders.edu.au/jspui/bitstream/2328/837/1/56-57.pdf
8. http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/top_poems.html
9. http://www.johnkinsella.org/essays/newaustralian.html
10.http://www.mahditourage.com/files/Hermeneutics_of_Eroticism--Tourage-- cssaame_25.3.pdf
11. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/search/?q=australian+poetry
12. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse/169/1#!/40734135
13. http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=15215
14.http://poemshape.wordpress.com/2011/12/01/erotic-poetry-love-passion-%E2%80%A2-a- review-of-poets-anthologies/
15. http://www.qct.com.au/rowbotham/australian.html
16.http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/new-and-selected-australian-poetry/story- fn9n8gph-1226846982768#
17.http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/books/poetry-lives-ok/story-e6frg8nf-1225873907280
18. Kinsella, John. The Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry. Australia: Penguin Group. 2009. Print
19. Murray, Les (ed.). The New Oxford Book of Australian Verse. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. 1996. Print
20. Porter, Peter . The Oxford Book of Modern Australian Verse. University of California: Oxford University Press Australia New Zealand, 1998. Print
21. Singh, R.K. Mechanics of Research Writing (2nd ed.). Bareilly: Prakash Book Depot. 2010. Print
[...]
- Arbeit zitieren
- Simon Kisku (Autor:in), 2014, A Contextual Study of Ross Donlon's Poetry, München, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/503736
Ähnliche Arbeiten
Kostenlos Autor werden
Kommentare