yr12_scw_Poetry

by Cecil Day Lewis  Enter the dream-house, brothers and sisters, leaving Your debts asleep, your history at the door: This is the home for heroes, and this loving Darkness a fur you can afford.
 * Poem || Analysis ||
 * 
 * Newsreel**

Fish in their tank electrically heated Nose without envy the glass wall: for them Clerk, spy, nurse, killer, prince, the great and the defeated, Move in a mute day-dream.

Bathed in this common source, you gape incurious At what your active hours have willed - Sleep-walking on that silver wall, the furious Sick shapes and pregnant fancies of your world.

There is the mayor opening the oyster season: A society wedding: the autumn hats look swell: An old crocks' race, and a politician In fishing-waders to prove that all is well.

Oh, look at the warplanes! Screaming hysteric treble In the low power-dive, like gannets they fall steep. But what are they to trouble - These silver shadows - to trouble your watery, womb-deep sleep?

See the big guns, rising, groping, erected To plant death in your world's soft womb. Fire-bud, smoke-blossom, iron seed projected - Are these exotics? They will grow nearer home!

Grow nearer home - and out of the dream-house stumbling One night into a strangling air and the flung Rags of children and thunder of stone niagaras tumbling, You'll know you slept too long. || **__Background:__**

'Newsreel' was published in 1938 (in a collection entitled 'Overtures of Death').
 * Cecil Day Lewis was a member of the communist party from 1935 to 1938.
 * It seems the poet is aware that war is on its way, it has begun in Spain and will soon effect others closer to home.
 * Newsreels in the 1930's were short and in black and white. Each piece of news was dealt with in a brisk manner like headlines. Local news was mixed in with national or international footage.
 * __Key ideas:__**


 * The title 'Newsreel' refers to information (in this case) that is relevant to the public.
 * Much of this would have been filled with propaganda but would have informed the public in some way.
 * 'the dream-house' (cinema) and 'that silver wall' (the cinema screen) indicate references to culture but also to the idea of dreaming and that the false sense of reality the cinema creates.
 * The poet refers to the people as 'fish in their tank' indicating they are sheltered from the world.
 * The fourth stanza indicates peacefullness and a description of every day life such as weddings. In contrast the fifth stanza, although, continues to highlight every day life but there is more a sense of shock and reality, 'warplanes! Screaming hysteric/ treble'.
 * The poem highlights the unawareness of the approaching war and the idea of every day life being disrupted.


 * __Historical significance:__**

Portraying a view from the outside but also the reality that everyday people didn't seem to realise. ||
 * **A Song for the Spanish Anarchists **  by Herbert Read

  The golden lemon is not made but grows on a green tree: A strong man and his crystal eyes is a man born free.  The oxen pass under the yoke and the blind are led at will: But a man born free has a path of his own and a house on the hill    And man are men who till the land and women are women who weave: and no man is a slave. || **__Background:__**
 * Fifty men own the lemon grove**
 * Herbert Read considered himself politically to be an anarchist.
 * He was considered as an 'English Anarchist poet' and a critic of literature and art.
 * His work shows signs of imagism (poetry movement that displays precise imagery, clear and sharp language).


 * __Key ideas:__**


 * The idea of freedom comes through strongly (with espicially the final line) 'and no man is a slave'
 * Imagery of what seems like farming 'oxen pass' and 'men who till the land'
 * The presence of women and men in the poem (struggling to find equality between men and women)
 * 'Fifty men own the lemon grove' - idea of sharing


 * __Historical significance:__**

Different point of view, idea of freedom and an alternative. ||