"back to melbourne" is a postmodernist poem discussing an individual's experience with the city of Melbourne. The text presents Melbourne as an emotionless, cruel city that neglects its citizens. My interpretation of the text is that through consonance, anaphora and imagery it critiques the concept of identity within the context of Melbourne, where the city's social and cultural setting is dysfunctional.
Through consonance, the poem presents the repetitive characteristics of life in Melbourne from a cynical perspective. The persona is shown to "find carlton cappuccino coffee comfort". In using consonance, the text emphasises the over-complicated lifestyle individuals live in Melbourne, with a basic item like coffee having multiple, excessive labels attached to it. The text criticises the artificiality of Melbourne's lifestyle, by cynically highlighting the excessive stylisation of generic goods. Furthermore, in using consonance to highlight the "manicured madonnas", the text brings to light the artificiality of women that excessively modify their beauty. In conveying that the women in Melbourne are heavily manicured, the text reinforces the stigma of artificial beauty taking prevalence within Melbourne's society and thus condemns the norms of synthetic beauty prevalent in Melbourne. Thus, through consonance, the text critiques how social norms in Melbourne revolve around artificiality and redundancy.
In using anaphora, the text presents Melbourne life as dull, repetitive and full of emotionally abusive people. By describing how the persona would "find the same faces in the same places in the same spaces", the text uses anaphora of the word "same" to convey to readers that life in Melbourne is stagnant and predictable. The text presents Melbourne's society as boring yet ruthless, with the persona finding "lovers that once sucked and bit and kissed and licked". By utilizing imagery, the text presents the reader with a visual description of love in Melbourne; melodramatic, painful and abusive. In doing so, the text directly attacks how love in Melbourne as a social activity has become corrupted with cruelty. Thus, through anaphora and imagery, the text portrays culture in Melbourne as both monotonous and emotionally soul-crushing.
{hook statement} "lygon street, carlton, victoria: sunday morning" by Greek-Australian author Komninos presents itself as an observation of an average Sunday morning in Lygon street. My interpretation is that Komninos portrays life within Australian society as filled with a social focus predominantly on appearance. Komninos questions the concept of an ideal family, mocking those who parade their children and use them as symbols of familial success.
Through figurative language, the poem draws attention to the manner in which girls present themselves to society down Lygon street. In using simile to depict the "girls, that look like parrots", the poem likens the girls to parrots, which are an exotic animal known for their vibrant, flashy appearance. The poem presents life down Lygon street as colourful, filled with women with impressive clothing. However, as the colours commonly displayed by parrots are rare in nature, the poem cynically presents women's fashion as artificial and excessive. Thus, using a simile, the poem comments on how women present themselves in the context of Melbourne, a large city in Australia, as both radiant yet artificial and over-the-top. {my perception}
Furthermore, visual imagery is utilised to critique how society forces people to construct a facade around their family life, causing uproar among the audience. The poem depicts "pushers" that are "full of children / just out for a midday stroll", and in doing so projects to audiences an image of a mass of strollers packed with children, crowding the street. The poem intends for audiences to react with disdain at the mass of strollers, who openly present their children. In doing so, the poem condemns how guardians of children conform to the societal expectation of placing their young on display. The poem presents Australian society as placing their children on a pedestal, which makes the reader respond with disgust. Thus, through visual imagery, the poem demands for the audience to resist against society's demand of them to excessively flail their children around like trophies. {context for both }
