3.1.2 Statement and voice

Statement, Subject Matter, Theme

The statement is the literal content of a poem which includes subject matter, that is, the things about which the poem is written which could include: people, objects, facts and events. There is also an underlying idea(s) or meaning(s) which the poet implies. This is called the theme(s). See the poem below:

The Shearer's Wife
Before the glare o' dawn I rise
To milk the sleepy cows, an' shake
The droving dust from tired eyes,
Look round the rabbit traps, then bake
The children's bread.
There's hay to stook, an' beans to hoe,
An' ferns to cut in the scrub below.
Women must work, when men must go
Shearing from shed to shed.

I patch and darn, now evening comes,
An' tired I am with labour sore,
Tired of the bush, the cows, the gums,
Tired, but we must dree for long months more
What no tongue tells.
Lonely is the bush, an' lonely I
Stare down the track no horse draws nigh,
An' start . . . at the cattle bells

Louis Esson
(Taken from The Four Corners (1968) A.K. Thomson (Ed.). Brisbane: The Jacranda Press.)

Subject Matter

If we examine this poem, we will see it is about a shearer's wife alone but for her children on a small outback holding. She lists all the chores that occupy her day by day and how she fills in her evenings. She is tired and lonely but resigned to her lot of waiting and keeping house while her husband is away droving. The subject matter is the shearer's wife and her way of life.

Setting

The mention of cows, dust, rabbit traps, baking bread, hay, beans, scrub, the gums, bush, horse and cattle bells suggests the outback setting and its way of life. It is easy for the reader to conjure up a picture of a crude, slab hut with its dirt floor, slip rails around a paddock, a "make-do" cow shed and a small vegetable garden, all set within a dry, straggly landscape of gumtrees and low scrub. The implied meanings, the themes, behind the topic and the setting are: isolation, hard work and loneliness.

The poet can also create levels of meaning in the text

There is the literal meaning as outlined above but there is also, as in the literary ballad, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, more than the literal meaning. (See Part 4, Literary Ballads, in which Coleridge's creation of three different levels of meaning, other than the literal, are mentioned.)

Voice

Being able to imagine the particular circumstances of the poem, helps the reader to establish whose voice is being heard in the poem. So, if the reader of the above poem questioned whose voice is best suited to the setting and circumstances that have been created, he/she would undoubtedly agree that it would be the person who is living the set of circumstances described above, namely, the shearer's wife. So this is exactly what has happened. Louis Esson, the poet, has, indeed, allowed the woman's voice to emerge from the setting. That it is a woman's voice is confirmed by the line: "'Women must work when men must go". Hers is the voice of a working class woman. Her speech reveals a continued slurring of some consonants, such as the "d" of "and" and the "f" of "of". This speech habit together with the use of the word, "dree" which means "endure", belongs to working class speech. It helps the reader to focus, not only on the woman's feelings as she recounts the pattern of her day's chores, but on the authenticity of herself and her description. Through her voice, also, the setting is inferred. Everything around her is familiar to her so she takes it for granted that her listeners would already know of her physical circumstances. She simply moves from one task to another in monotonous regularity. Therefore, Esson's voice, as such, is not needed, and, in fact, not heard. The woman's experience speaks for itself and so reveals the harsh conditions of life endured by these early pioneers on small bush holdings in isolated areas.