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English Poem analysis

Hey, I was wondering if any one could give me any tips of analysing this poem?...

I’m sure Nature has disapproved of me
for years, as if it had overheard
one of my silent screeds against it,
and my insistence that only the artificial
has a real shot at becoming more
than we started with, designed,
revised, something completely itself.
If it could speak, Nature might say
it contains lilies, the strange beauty
of swamps, the architectural art
of spiders, the many et ceteras
that make the world the world.
Nothing man-made can compete,
Nature might say. Oh Nature
has been known to go on and on.
And if it wanted to push things further,
it could cite our sleek perfection
of bombs and instruments of torture,
our nature so human we hide
behind words that disguise and justify.
But that’s as generous as I want to be
in giving Nature its say. I’ve seen it
randomly play its violence card—
natural, no-motive crimes
with hail and rain and vicious winds,
taking out, say, trailer courts and
playing fields and homes for the elderly.
So I want to be heard and overheard,
this time for real, out loud, in fact
right in Nature’s face, to say I prefer
the artifice in what’s called artificial,
the often concealed skill involved,
without which we’d have no accurate
view of ourselves, or of lilies in a pond.

Thanks a lot :smile:
Original post by Islaforest
Hey, I was wondering if any one could give me any tips of analysing this poem?...

I’m sure Nature has disapproved of me
for years, as if it had overheard
one of my silent screeds against it,
and my insistence that only the artificial
has a real shot at becoming more
than we started with, designed,
revised, something completely itself.
If it could speak, Nature might say
it contains lilies, the strange beauty
of swamps, the architectural art
of spiders, the many et ceteras
that make the world the world.
Nothing man-made can compete,
Nature might say. Oh Nature
has been known to go on and on.
And if it wanted to push things further,
it could cite our sleek perfection
of bombs and instruments of torture,
our nature so human we hide
behind words that disguise and justify.
But that’s as generous as I want to be
in giving Nature its say. I’ve seen it
randomly play its violence card—
natural, no-motive crimes
with hail and rain and vicious winds,
taking out, say, trailer courts and
playing fields and homes for the elderly.
So I want to be heard and overheard,
this time for real, out loud, in fact
right in Nature’s face, to say I prefer
the artifice in what’s called artificial,
the often concealed skill involved,
without which we’d have no accurate
view of ourselves, or of lilies in a pond.

Thanks a lot :smile:


Professor S Dunn, Professor S Dunn,
Furnish’d and burnish’d by Forest Hills sun,
What strenuous handball we played after tea,
We in the tournament you against me!

You praise steely missiles these objects of joy,
The speed of a swallow, the grace of a boy,
They fly from their silos and reach for the sun,
These huge phallic passerines, Prof Stephen Dunn.

Professor S Dunn, Professor S Dunn,
How mad I am, sad I am, glad that you won,
The rocketing ceiling shot, hook, kill and slice,
Like murderous Nature you never live twice.

The evil euonymus shines as we walk,
Flaunting red berries on poisonous stalk,
The tacky verandah is buzzing with flies
They crap in our juleps and get in our eyes

The Hitman is waiting for twilight to fall,
The pictures of Attenboro bright on the wall,
O Prof, I have poison Oak wrapped in my hair
And Kudzu has managed to sting me down there

Around us are Edsels and Chevvies afar,
Above us the intimate roof of the car,
And here on my right is the Prof of my choice,
With the tilt of his nose and the chime of his voice.

All the sententious odes, dissing Nature and worse
And the ominous, ominous anti green verse
We sat in the drive-in till twenty to one
Then the hitman despatched you Professor S Dunn

(edited 8 years ago)

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