Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), in his Essays, wrote that "Poetry is simply the most beautiful, impressive and widely effective mode of saying things, and hence its importance." He failed to go on to explain his point, but his meaning is clear. Poetry differs from prose and other genres by that has formal devices and techniques used to construct it, and that without such techniques poetry is not, as such, poetry. Judith Wright's South of My Days and Woman to Man are two poems which display this link between the use of poetic devices and the forming of coherent meaning. The poetic devices visible in these two poems are those of figurative language, including simile, metaphor and personification, sound techniques such as alliteration and onomatopoeia, and rhyme & rhythm. These devices all contribute in their different forms to our establishment of meaning from the poem.
Firstly, we will look at the simplest of these devices, that of figurative language. South of My Days is a profound example of the use of these in the construction of meaning. The first stanza of the poem can be seen to carry a large amount of personification and imagery, using such terms as " delicate outline , bony slopes wincing , clean, lean, hungry country." These terms are used to convey Wright's message to the reader that the land has a life within it, beyond the harsh outlines of the terrain, an inner life that none of us can see. Wright then utilizes imagery to describe a scene of the poem, using words such as "leaf-silenced, willow-choked, the slope a tangle of medlar and crabapple- to express to the reader the disarray of the scene. Given that willow, medlar and crabapple are flora not native to Australia, the subject she is writing about, we get the sense that she is talking about an introduced plant, one that was once ordered and neatly planted, but now is overgrown and spreading wildly. The last line of the stanza reads "and the old cottage lurches in for shelter.
