-Poetry-
Mark Twain
Analysing Mark Twain's Poems
Here I shall analyse four of Mark Twain's poems; O'Lord Our Father, Genius, These annual Bills, A Sweltering Day in Australia.
O' Lord Our Father
O’Lord Our Father is one of Mark Twain’s most notable pieces of poetry. Written in the later years of his life it discusses the subject of war, bloodshed, patriotism, nationalism and religion.
Mark Twain was known to criticise contemporary society often in the subjects of war and religion and this poem was in some way message to society of his stand points.
If you read the poem quickly and merely glance over it you would probably think that Mark Twain is a nationalist writing a war poem and how war is good for a country (ideas such as these were the main public opinion on war of time). But if you want to understand to poem you have to put it into context, specifically in the mind set of Mark Twain. If Mark Twain himself was anti-war and anti-patriotism etc. Why would he write a poem about incurring war? When reading through the poem a couple of times I had decided the most plausible option that Mark Twain would write such a poem is to write it as parody. A poetic parody written against the society of the time and its opinion on war.
So it was a parody but why is the titel of the poem O’Lord Our Father which is most certainly a religious line, why would Mark Twain use that in a poem that is about war. To find that out we need to discuss the Christian faith. In the Bibel is not only the story of Jesus Christ and the 1st testament but is also a religious guide book representing the Christian faith. The Bible clearly states that you should not kill or harm anyone and in war you certainly kill and harm people.
In short Mark Twain wanted to contradict war and Christianity, there are lines in the poem which go as “O Lord, Our God Help us to tear their soldiers - To bloody shreds with our shells” or “Help us to drown the thunder of the guns - With the shrieks of their wounded, - Writhing in pain. - Help us to lay waste their humble homes” The lines from the poem clearly shows that assistance is being asked to God to help kill and harm the enemy, a complete contradictory of the Christianity supports.
In the manner Mark Twain had managed to parody American society and in essence look to an extend evil.
The poem consists a couple of different rhyming tools; assonance and end rhyme. Examples of assonance are for instance;
10 - 11. “Help us to drown the thunder of the guns With the shrieks of their wounded,”
22. “And the icy winds of winter,”
28. “Protract their bitter pilgrimage,”
Examples of end rhyme;
From stanza 7-9
“Help us to tear their soldiers
To bloody shreds with our shells;
Help us to cover their smiling fields”
From stanza 21-22
“Sports of the sun flames of summer
And the icy wind of winter,”
From Stanza 26-27
“Blast their hopes,
Blight their lives.”
A sweltering day in Australia
A Sweltering Day in Australia might be one of Mark Twain’s strangest but also maybe one of his most innovative pieces of literature. The poem could be described to be in the category of nonsense poems, poems with made up words or the poem has no meaning to it.
When reading through the poem multiple times you start to get a feeling for what the locations are in the poem and who some of the characters are in the poem and what happens to them. To make sure that I could at least have an attempt at analysing the poem I needed to try to find the definition of many of the words. For many of the words I could not find a definition as many of the words are in Aboriginal or Maori most of these words I believe are verbs or adjectives judging by the way they have been placed in a sentence, for example “The Nangkita swallow, the Wallaroo swan” in this sentence I judge that the adjective is Wallaroo. The other words where I did find a definition for where mostly the names of small towns and villages and geographic locations in Australia. The rest of the words I could not find a definition for I believe are names
After reading the poem and knowing the definitions of some of the words I judge that the story is placed in South East Australia near villages such as Woolloomooloo, Jamberoo or Wolloway (near modern day Sydney). Judging by sentences such as “They long for the peace of the Timaru shade and thy balmy soft airs., O sweet Mittagong” it is probably a very warm day. This connects with the title of the poem “A Sweltering Day in Australia”. From what I know of the name of the characters in the poem are Cootamnudra, Takee, Wakatipu Toowoomba, Paramatta, Binnum, Mypongo, Kapunda, Yankalilla, Narrandera, Cameron and Parawirra. All of the characters are flat and do not develop throughout the story, only one event happens to them at that is all we get to know from them. According to the poem some of them get lost some wake up from sleep and some mourn the death. Also by looking at the sentence “All burn in this hell’s holocaust” I believe that describes the atmosphere of the setting of the poem a harsh environment with warm temperatures where characters look for shade and other actions which I mentioned before.
I believe in the end even though this poem seams to have some sort of a storyline behind it I think it might hide a secret message of some sort which has been know to happen before poets like Lewis Carroll did this with the poem Jabberwocky.
This poem has examples of assonance end rhyme and alliteration.
There is one example of assonance on stanza 27
27 “To the Woolgoolga woodlands despairingly flies;”
Nearly the whole poem has end rhyme in it all written in a similiar faishon where the 1st stanza rhymes with the 3 stanza and the 2nd stanza rhymes with the fourth stanza following an A B A B A way of end rhyme
Example:
5-9: “And sigheth in secret for Murrurundi, A
The Whangeroo wombat lamenteth the day B
That made him an exile from Jerrilderie; A
The Teawamute Tumut from Wirrega’s glade,” B
The poem also consists of quite a lot of alliteration especially when he uses the words that came from Aboriginal or Maori
Examples:
6. “The Whangeroo wombat lamenteth the day”
8. “Teawamute Tumult from Wirrega’s glade”
18. “Worrow Wanilla, demented with pain”
Genius
Genius is another one of Mark Twain’s poems written later in life and returns to more conventional means of writing poetry in comparison to ‘A Sweltering Day in Australia’.
Unlike O’ Lord Our Father and A Sweltering Day in Australia which in the end in my opinion are seriously written poems this is much more comedic and would probably be described as funnier less serious poem.
In one way or another this is Mark Twain’s tribute poem, an ode to the people he likes the most, the scientists, the inventors, the technicians the people who in Mark Twain’s time period who where starting to create the world we live in today. Genius was also written in a manner that also slightly pokes fun at the people that Mark Twain calls genius.
The poem starting from the third stanza starts to build itself up where each stanza progresses in who you may call a genius. For instance the sixht stanza (the first stanza of the build up) ends with “you may set him down as a genius ” the stanza following that it says “he is undoubtedly a genius” followed by “he is most certainly a genius" it follows this pattern of build up until the second to last stanza where it says “he is beyond question a genius”.
At the end of the poem is where Mark Twain himself calls a “Genius” in a humorous way by saying that if you write about the insanity of the people he calls genius and then get drunk then you have to be a Genius. This last stanza wraps up the poem by referring himself as a Genius.
Mark Twain has written this poem in a style that is called free verse it means that there is no rhyme in the poem, instead the poem is written in a natural speech. To make up for the lack of rhyme Mark Twain needed to use different ways to make sure that the structure of the poem was kept. Mark Twain has done this by using commas and more or less repeating the same phrase “he is x genius”. All of this makes sure that the poem manages to still keep rhythm and still manages to sound like an ordinary poem but then without any rhyme.
These Annual Bills
These annual bills is one of Mark Twain’s earlier poems like the poem Genius this is one of Mark Twain’s more humorous poems and can be categorised as a comedic poem. These annual bills is a poem about the narrator most certainly having a dislike for the bills he has to pay this can been clearly seen by how the narrator describes the annual bills by writing “Shall damn and damn these annual bills!”
Although it seams to many people that the poem is of a random topic, unrelated to anything significant. If you delve deeper into Mark Twain’s personal life you find out that at one stage he had his own financial troubles at around the same time of writing ‘These annual bills’. As in true Mark Twain fashion he seams to have outspoken ideas about government and other political policies. I believe that this poem is a way that Mark Twain expressed his feelings about taxation in the country and how it manages to bring people who are experiencing financial troubles could be negatively be affected by it.
These annual bills is written in a way that does not reflect Mark Twain’s typical style of writing poems. Mark Twain has been know to write poems with very little rhyme or no rhyme at all (free verse) a good example of this is the poem Genius. Unlike Genius and other poems written by Mark Twain, These annual bills has a high number of rhyme in it especially end rhyme. There are three stanzas in the poem with four lines in each of them and all of them consist of end rhyme something that is not very present in Mark Twain’s style of writing poems as mentioned earlier.
As mentioned earlier end rhyme is an essential part of the poems structure and rhythm but also assonance plays a role in the poem.
The end rhyme in the poem follows a A, A B, B, A, A, B, B and so forth, a couple of examples are;
Stanza 1 Lines 1-4.
“These annual bills! these annual bills! A
How many a song their discord trills A
Of “truck” consumed, enjoyed, forgot, B
Since I was skinned by last year’s lot!” B
As mentioned before there is a presence of assonance in the poem, some examples are;
Stanza 1 Line 2. “How many a song their discord trills”
Stanza 2 Line 3. “Once loved, lost, mourned—now vexing ILLS”
The next one could be classified as assonance depending on your accent if you where speaking in British English the next part of the sentence would not be classified as assonance due to the different sounding A but if you take into account that it was originally written for American audiences and written by an American poet it can be counted as assonance.
Stanza 3 Line 4. “Shall damn and damn these annual bills!”