AD Hope

By James Cox, Student

Life, context, etc

An essay hosted at LiteratureClassics.com

Considering the life and the work of a poet can help us to understand a particular poem of theirs better. Context plays an important role in this. By looking at a poem from the context that it was written in allows us to see what exactly the poet was thinking. This Essay examines these for an Asutralian poet, Alec Derwent Hope.

AD Hope was born at Cooma in New South Wales in 1907. His family moved to Macqaurie Valley in Tasmania when he was three years old. His father was a minister in the Presbyterian Church, and the family moved to several other parishes.He recieved his early education a a number of schools around Asutralia, including a one-teacher school in Tasmania, and Bathurst and Fort Street High Schools. At Sydney uiniversity he gained his Arts Degree after not being accepted for medicine. In 1928 he won a travelling scholarship to Oxford University in the UK. In 1932 he entered the NSW Department of Education as a teacher. After a few years, he lecutured English at Sydeney Teacher's College, where he taught people such as James McAuley. He later became Senior Lecturer of English at Melbourne University and thenb became Professor of Engliush at the National University at Canberra in 1950, where he remained until retirement.

His first poems were not published until the mid-thirties, but he had shown himself to be one of Asutralia's best poets even before his book, The Wandering Islands, was published in 1955. By the time his Collected Works apperaed ion 1970 he was officially acknowledged as a major Asutralian poet. He was first regarded as a satirist, but later he emerged as a lyricsal and meditative poet, capable with an eloquence which was unusual for Asutrralian poets of the Period. His critical works include Native Companions and The Cave and the Spring. He co-won th Encyclopedia Britannica ASward for Literature in 1965 and in 1972 he was made a member of the Order of Britain.

In this miodern era, his poetry is less admired than it was 30 years ago. His fierce attacks on the bible have less impact now that religion has ceased to be a mjajor factor in people's lives, his heterosexual passion sounds unciool, and his poems have a stolid, iambic look upon the page. In fact, when he came from Oxford he lamented the fact that he could not write verse-forms like Wystan, even thouygh the two had much iun commion due to their advenutres into the fields of modern knwoledge. A writer who does not get a major publication util he is nearly fifty can be expected to decline in later life, and that is waht AD Hiope did. In the months before his death he retreated into silence and separated from the world in his Canberran nursing home. Daviud Brooks, a close friend, said that ""His body was extremely fit and his mind was not, in the most recent years. He retreated into a kind of silence. I think he's been ready to go for a long time."" He died a week short of his 93rd birthday eariler this year.

AD Hope is known for a wide rangew of poetic works: satires, meditations and critical works are a some of the types of petry he has written. The form taken by the great amjority of his poems is six or four line stanzas, with two or three lines in each Stanza rhyming with each other. In terms of content AD Hope writes across a wdie range of suubjects, unlimke say Roewbrt Frost who concentrates on nature poetry. He writes critically on the Vietnam War and the state of both modern and asutralian scoiety, he writes fodnly o*f Pius XII, ""This great pope."" He writes of nature, sports, and the great engineering feats of anicent man. Some of his poems tear apart bible stories, and perhaps his wierdist peoms is about a man who gets turned into a rug by the girl he has a one night stand with. Throughout many of his poems, however, is sex. Hope's heterosexual passion shows through many of his works.

For the purposes of this essay I will look at three of Hope's critical peoms: Asutralia, Standardization and Insciption for a War. The first two of these poems are critcal of society, and the thoird is the reaction of AD Hope to the Vietnam War. Hope was often seen as a conservative and was condemned for not joining the Anti-Vietnam movement. His only written reaction to the war was in that poem. The poem exists of rhyming couplets, with little or no Enjambment, which serves the purpose of making little 'bites' of text that are read by themselves.

""We are the yuong they drafted out,
To wars their foly brought about.
Go tell those old men, safe in bed,
We took their orders and are dead.""

The main meanings present in the poem are condemnation of the useless and bloody Vietnam War, and also the condemnation of war in General. The second meaning can be surmised from the fact that many parts of the poem can be read as if the poem was taliking about the first World War, another war of folly where millions died from bad orders.

Asutrralia is Hope's criticism of general Asutralian society and the country itself. He calls the five capital cities

""five teeming sores,
Each drains her: a vast parasite robber-state.""

""Yet there are somne like me turn gladly home
From the lush jungle of modern thought...""

It is interesting to note that AD Hope has both moved around the eastern states a lot, seeinbg the various contrysides, and he lost himself in the namred landscapes of eastern Asutralia in his later years. Australia is a poem of seven stanzas, each stanza consisting of four lines with the Rhyme scheme being ABAB. Little enjambment exists in the poem, most of the stanzas stand alone as paragraphsd. The first five stanzas talk about Asutralia, how it is both a new and old country, geologicallky old but politcally new, and how it is both Erupean colonial and nautally indivual.The next two stanzas talk about the wilderness in the centre of Australia and how if you move away from the population cnetres of he coastal plain you can escape

""...the chatter of cultured apea,
Which is csalle civilisation over there.""

As a poem about Australian society, th main meaning present is how bad it really is. This is quite clear in some of the words of the text: the quotes above show this. Part of his criticism is aimed towards the intellect of the average Asutralian, he calls Asutralia stupid and devoid of culture, he calls Australkians second hand Europeans, and he calls the society cultured apes.

""Without songs, architecture, hsitory;
""The meotions and suoperstions of younger land,""

""The river of her immense stupidity
""Floods hger monotonous tribe...""

""...second-hand Europeans pulluate
""timidly on the edge of alien shores.""

Standradisation is one of many poems ever written that condemn the sate of modern society: another poem condemning pollution, mass production, mechanization of the workforce, etc. It also tells us, howevr, of the mass production of Mother Nature: how 'she gathers and repeats the cast of a face, a million butterfly wings.' Essentially though, the poem is still just about showing the faults of modern society. These are the main two meanings you can find in the poem: the evil of society today:

""the house not made with hands...
vacuum cleaners and tinned soup.""

and the warning against 'complete standardization:'

""Anonymous faces plastered with her smile.""

The structure of the poem consists of 10 stanzas of four lines each, with the rhyme scheme being ABAB. The first five stanzas show enjambment: together they tell us about the ills of society. Then a twist, or volta, in the poem occurs: the next five stanzas form the second part of the poem. This next part tells us of the mass production occurring in nature, and then finally the terrible future of complete standardization. The effect of the twist in the poem is to tell us of some of the things wrong with society in the first phase of the poem, and then in the second phase a crescendo builds up every stanza until the final one, which presents us with a 1984 -like picture of everything being the same.

Like most other good poets, AD Hope uses fluent and detailed language in his poems. The reason for this is to allow us to picture what the poet is thinking more clearly, and this allows us to see the meaning that the poets has put into place better. For instance, the descriptive language in

""Huge towns thrust up in synthetic stone,
and films and sleek miraculous motor cars""

paints a picture of one of those modern 'horror cities:' instead of a city being the place where people relax and meet and have fun, it is a place where people work and factories are located. It is a place of concrete buildings and smog.

In that sense, Standardization is much like 1984 - it is a text that is a warning: it is a warning of what could happen. The difference between the two is that 1984 looks at a continuation of governments from the 1948 English Socialism era, while Standardization looks at Australian society in the 50s and 60s.

Reading the poems from a 20th centruy context gives an entirely different meaning than if you read them when they were written. The poem Asutralia makes less sense now that the 'second hand Europeans' are now just a proportion of the melting pot of cultures: multicultural society. Australia has also got a distinct style of art, achitecture and culture that Hope expresses as being non-existent when he writes the poem. Other words of his still count, however, mainly those which talk of the geogarphy of Asutrali, which would take milliions of years to change, not three decades.

Incription for a War is also read differently due to the time between niow and the war itself. As a young adult, I have no knowledge of the Vietnam War other than which was taught to me. Future generations will klnow even less and the poem will not mean much to them. How you read the pioem all depends ion how much you know of the history of that time. For example, people old enopugh to remember that time and even veterans will understand the poem well and recall just how big the fuss was at the time.

Standardization is perhaps the poem that has suffered the most in the thirty or so years since it was written. As a criticism of society, it is very unorginal in its form and meaniung. Since it is so common to see and read rhese criticisms of society, people have been accustomed to them and can condition themselves no to pay much attention to them. Today's public do not mutter much about the conditoion of society, and how houses are not made with hands and tinned soup is readily availiable. The 1984 like picture of 'Standardization' has also gone out of style since the Cold War and the 'threat of Communism.'

In conclkusion, it is interesting to see how much the reading of these three poems have changed since the time they were written. As a poet, AD Hope shows considerable skill in his work, and it is only the twin forces of change and time that have brought about contextual changes in the reading of his work. As far as his critical works go, Hope shows a large amount of scope on his ability to comment on society, its events, and the forces shaping it.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Poems for Sixth FOrm, 1975, F. J. Allsop et. al., McGraw Hill Book Company.
Cross-Country, 1988, John Barnes and Brian McFarlane, Rigby Hienemann.
'Aurtralia loses a literary giant,' 15 July 2000, The West Australian.