The poetry of Sylvia Plath and Bruce Dawe differ considerably in style, context and language, yet offer unique perceptions of the issues surrounding society and themselves. Born two years apart in different countries, both poets demonstrated great promise and talent at a very young age, especially Plath who regarded herself as, dangerously brainy. ‘
Their talent has been recognised with many awards and scholarships, yet both poet’s received international fame from their late poetry. Dawe’s reputation as an acclaimed Australian poet arrived 37 years after his was born, when he won the Ampol Arts Award for creative literature.
As with Dawe’s poetry, Plath found her true voice later in life when she decided to write at a much faster pace and more controlled rhythm. Although her writing was at its peak at his time, Plath’s marriage to British poet Ted Hughes was experiencing complications. Ted’s relationships with fashion models drove the marriage apart, and later made a depressed Plath to take her own life. The anger and betrayal that she felt at the hand of Hughes, were very strong and are apparent in Plath’s late poetry. Images of death and pain appear throughout many of these poems (Ostriker, p348).
Sylvia Plath explores the emotions and feelings of her own life experiences in her poetry. Like her marriage breakup affecting her late poetry, Plath’s work reflects the pivotal moments in her life where she releases the joy and anger that has build inside of her. In the poem, “The Arrival of the Beebox,” Plath expresses her feelings of betrayal towards her father’s death, by exercising power over him as a beekeeper. On the other hand, Bruce Dawe is a completely different poet, he writes about the matters of social, political and cultural interest that concern the typical Australian.
Dawe writes about all people who are vulnerable and easily hurt, and has an instinctive sympathy with them. The thirty years leading to his poetry’s success, Dawe had experienced nearly everything life had to offer, he had worked through over 20 jobs ranging from a salesman to a dairy farmer. In terms of the people he met, and colourful language her heard, it was a formative period, training his ear to the miances and cadences of the speech of ordinary Australians.
Through the point of view of a bystander, Dawe records the issues and tragedies concerning society and reveals there nature to others, without overstating or sentimentalising it. Dawe’s poem “Homecoming” looks at the casualties of the Vietnam War, a critical political issue surfacing at the time, with great debate and criticism. Dawe and Plath employ a range of poetic devices in their poems “Homecoming” and “The Arrival of the Beebox” respectively, that distinguish Dawe as the poet of people and Plath as an enigma to the reader.
