How to Leave the World that Worships should by Ros Barber
Let faxes butter-curl on dusty shelves.
Let junkmail build its castles in the hush
of other people’s halls. Let deadlines burst
and flash like glorious fireworks somewhere else.
As hours go softly by, let others curse
the roads where distant drivers queue like sheep.
Let e-mails fly like panicked, tiny birds.
Let phones, unanswered, ring themselves to sleep.
Above, the sky unrolls its telegram,
immense and wordless, simply understood:
you’ve made your mark like birdtracks in the sand -
now make the air in your lungs your livelihood.
See how each wave arrives at last to heave
itself upon the beach and vanish. Breathe.
Seaside Sonnets
Let junkmail build its castles in the hush
of other people’s halls. Let deadlines burst
and flash like glorious fireworks somewhere else.
As hours go softly by, let others curse
the roads where distant drivers queue like sheep.
Let e-mails fly like panicked, tiny birds.
Let phones, unanswered, ring themselves to sleep.
Above, the sky unrolls its telegram,
immense and wordless, simply understood:
you’ve made your mark like birdtracks in the sand -
now make the air in your lungs your livelihood.
See how each wave arrives at last to heave
itself upon the beach and vanish. Breathe.
Seaside Sonnets
Ros Barber, the author of ‘How to Leave the World that Worships Should’ is shown to have a negative attitude of the way we live and work in the modern world and believes a more natural world would be less stressful. This idea is shown through Barber’s use of structure, poetic devices and language choices.
ReplyDeleteBarber shows that modern technology only brings stress and bad news, so instead we should be more spontaneous. He orders that we must “let” a multiple of things happen, suggesting we should be less controlling, which technology forces us to be. The irony of him trying to control us to be less controlling creates a sense of humor, reflecting his humor towards those obsessed with technology. The repetition of “let” emphasises this importance. But it could also bore the reader which would also echo Barber’s belief that modern society is becoming high maintenance.
Moreover, Ros Barber illustrates his idea that the rise of modern technology should be fought against. Where he writes: “Let junkmail build its castles”, he personifies an annoying occurrence of everyday life into an army. This exaggeration could shock the reader because it mirrors the idea that media also exaggerates a seemingly ordinary event into a scandal which the general public rarely notices. This semantic field of war is built upon when he writes “the sky unrolls its telegram” which reads the death of a loved one from war.
Finally, Barber highlights that our self-destructive nature of being stressed is due to the added pressure modern technology brings. In the final stanza, the long sentence: “see how each wave arrives at last to heave itself upon the beach and vanish.”, results in the reader becoming short of breath, similar to how our unnecessarily hectic lives result in us becoming short of breath but also of time and love to spend with those who actually matter. This is exaggerated when he then follows the long sentence with the one-syllable demand: “Breathe.” This uncharacteristically short sentence encased with full stops, allows the reader to actually breathe, creating a sense of tranquillity and relief as reach the end of the poem. Perhaps the narrator is acting as a teacher of meditation, where modern technology is prohibited and the poem represents a meditation class.
Through Ros Barber’s use of personification, repetition, irony, imagery and varied sentence length, he explains his negative attitude of modern technology and the stressful and saddening impact it has on our lives and work.
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Actually, Ros Barber is a woman and was a young mother when she wrote that poem. Read about what she says about writing this poem. Her fist commission and first chance of getting back to writing poetry after having become a mother. I do not think she was having war in mind when she wrote about junk mail building castles. She is British, living in the south of England and driving to the coast to get away from her duties and obligations, reacting to other people, including her baby. Connecting with the source, the sea, the unconscious, her creativity, breathing freedom.
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DeleteI wouldn’t say that ‘the sky unrolls it’s telegram’ has anything to do with war . More about spending time away from distractions and taking time to appreciate the wonder of nature :)
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health, he sent me the medicine through the FedEx delivery service. I took the medicine
as prescribed by him and 4 weeks later i was cured from HERPES, I went to different hospitals for confirmation to be actually sure if my sickness was gone and to my surprise all my results were negative, Dr.okosun
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and here is my private email, you can get in touch with me to know more about this Dr, robinnicole005@gmail.com