Essay Questions

How does the narrator describes a big city in his poems?

One of the common subjects in the poems is life in a big city and through this the narrator describes those places in great detail. One such poem is “City Nightfall” in which the narrator describes, as the title of the poem suggests as well, a city during nighttime. In every poem, the city is covered by a thick layer of smoke, sometimes described as “smoke upon smoke”. This causes the people living in those cities to feel suffocated, without the possibility of getting out. This feeling is also created by describing the buildings in a city, often glued to one another and in such a close proximity that even the sky is no longer visible. Poverty is another ever-present element in the big cities and something which no one escape. Alongside poverty, the narrator also mentions diseases and death, the latter two being caused almost exclusively by extreme poverty. The image painted is one none too pleasant, a horror image that only becomes worse and worse as time passes by.

What does Venusberg means in the poem “A Surrender”?

The name appears in the first line and it is used to refer to a group of people. In the second line, those people are then described as being people who had lost the war against love. The name “Venusberg” is often found in European folklore and can be translated through “Mountain of Venus” and it refers to men who have been seduced by women with a supernatural ancestry. The presence of these men is more common in German folklore and in later times, after the spread of Christianity throughout Europe, it was also used to refer to men who have been tricked by witches who pledged their souls to the devil.

Why does the narrator associates Lane Cove and the God Pan in the poem “Pan at Lane Cove”?

Pan is the ancient Greek Mythology the God associated with nature, mountains, songs and shepherds while Lane Cove is most likely the Sydney suburb which exists to this day. Lane Cove was relatively uninhabited until the end of the Second World War, most people in the area being involved in some way or another in the farming on timber industry. After the Second World War, the returning soldiers were given by the state plots of land in Lane Cove and as such the suburb developed rapidly in a short period of time. The association between Lane Cove and Pan has to do with the practices described as being done by the residents of the suburb, namely drinking in excess, sexual promiscuity and singing. All these elements were in the past associated with Pan and the narrator makes a modern association as well.