Poetry C/w

YEAR 11 POETRY COURSE-WORK

The two poems I am studying in my course-work are “Lore” by R.S. Thomas and “Woman Work” by Maya Angelou. “Lore” is about a man ‘Job Davies’ and his working life. “Woman Work” is, as it suggests in the title, about a woman and her working life. In my course-work I am going to compare and contrast how each poet treats the theme of life and work.

R.S. Thomas was born in Cardiff in 1913. He attended the Country School in Holyhead and then attended the University college of North Wales. He became a curate in the Anglican Church and retired in 1978. He used simple language in his poetry and his poems reflect his interest in the Countryside, Wales and religion. He died in 2000. Marguerite Annie Johnson was born in 1928 in Missouri in the American South. She adopted the name Maya Angelou in the late twenties. Her mother’s boyfriend raped her when she was seven and worked for the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. She is very vociferous about the rights of black women. The life of each speaker differs. In “Woman Work” the speaker is a black, South American woman who has only experienced hardship in her life. “Lore” is spoken by an old Welsh man who, like the speaker in “Woman Work”, has experienced a hard life.

Both titles have a traditional meaning. “Lore” means a set of traditional facts and beliefs, while “Woman Work” suggests the traditional role of women. I inferred from the title “Lore” that it is a traditional story about a traditional person’s way of life, which is what the poem is about. My opinion of the title “Woman Work” is that work a woman does, which is what the poem is about. Both poets, however, focus on tradition, but in different ways.

The poem “Lore” is written about a Welsh man called Job Davies. It describes his life, his battle with nature and his views on life, “What to do? Stay green”. Job has a positive attitude towards life even though the seasons have been ‘poisoning’ him. The phrase “miserable? Kick my arse!” shows his sense of hummer and his use of vernacular language reinforces the title as a traditional/country style language. When Job asks the question “What to do?” he questions his existence. The fact that he answers the question shows he has a positive attitude. The rhythm in the poem is steady and is the same throughout. The poem. This reflects his continues working life that ahs always been the same. Also, throughout the poem there are rhyming couplets. The two last lines of the poem don’t follow the rhyming scheme. This is to hammer home the overall message of the poem.

“Woman Work” is about a black wife and mother in south U.S.A. In the poem she tells of what she has to do and how she find solace in nature. The attitude of the speaker towards her life is negative, in the first stanza. Stanza one is written as a list and without the use of punctuation and monosyllabic words, for example ‘the cane to be cut I got to clean up this hut’, allows the poem to be quick paced which reflects her life. The monosymbalic words also shows her resentment towards her works, for example, ‘the floor to mop, the food to shop.’ “Lore” on the other hand has a positive attitude towards his work. The rhythm of “Woman Work” slows after the first stanza. The language is more poetic. There are rhyming couplets in the first stanza but there is a rhyming pattern of 'ABCB' in the other stanzas. Both poets use the rhythm and rhyme in their poems to reflect the speaker’s life.

The speaker in “Lore” uses simple or vernacular language. This is showing us that he lives in the country. There is a metaphor in the poem that stands out. Job talks about the weather that he describes as “slow poison”. By using this, the poet shows that Job has had a hard, harsh life. There is the use of personification in stanza one. The poet has used ‘treachery of the seasons’