“Sports Field” by Judith Wright

In our lives there are always a start and an end. Between The start and the end we have to go through a cycle of life. Our life is like a jigsaw that will fit nicely together. The things that happen to us in our early life can shape the course that our future life will follow. So we have to make the most of the opportunity in hand or we will end up regretting that we have not made the most of it.

Our life is like a sports carnival there are always a start and an end. In the poem “Sports Field” by Judith Wright, she uses the story of a sports carnival to describe the life of human being. Because life is like a race we can either win or lose.

Lots of the dominant imagery in the poem is pertaining to sport. For example “great golden ball that no one ever catches” Judith has used the framing metaphor in which a human life is described in terms of a day from sunrise to sunset. Sunrise symbolizing birth and sunset symbolizing death.

Theme is defined as a subject of conversation, discussion, thought or composition. The poet has a particular theme in mind when she composes a poem and one of the basic steps in understanding poetry is discovering just what the theme is and one of the main ways in which theme is developed is through imagery. The dictionary meaning for imagery is comparisons, descriptions, and figures of speech that help the mind form forceful or beautiful pictures. Poetry often contains imagery. There are three kinds of imagery which are simile, metaphor, personification.

Simile is a statement that one thing is like another, especially as a figure of speech for some effect. For example “a face likes marble, as hard as nails, as brave as a lion.”

Metaphor is an implied comparison between two different things; figure of speech in which a word or phrase that ordinarily means one thing is applied to another thing in order to suggest a likeness between the two. For example “a copper sky,” “a heart of stone.”

Personification is a figure of speech in which a lifeless thing or quality is spoken of as if alive. For example: The music sobbed. Duty calls us. There Honor comes, a pilgrim grey (William Collins).

In this poem there are lots of metaphors used and few similes. The metaphors are used to make the poem to have different meanings. In this poem Judith Wright used metaphors so from the story sports carnival to our daily life.

Naked all night the field breathed its dew until the great gold ball of day sprang up from the dark hill. This is the first verse from the poem. In the metaphorical meaning it’s the start of life, when the baby born.

When the baby met with their life, it’s described by the second verse now as the children come the field and they are met. Their day is measured and marked its lanes and tapes are set this lines means that life is set by our parents.

And the children gilt by the sun shoulder one another; crouch at the marks to run, and spring, and run together. This is the third verse in this verse it saying that life is precious, people try to get the best future for themselves, they working towards their goal and they all start with the same opportunities its depends on the person to set their life.

The children pledged and matched and built to win or lose, who grow, while no one watched, the selves in their sidelong eyes this is saying that they compete with each other for their future.

The watchers love them in vain. Our parents have ambitions for our life they want us to be a success person. The ball dropped or held this is a line from verse four it describing our mood sometimes we can be happy or sad.

Till the day’s great golden ball that no one ever catches, drops, and at its fall runners and watchers from this verse it is saying that we cannot stop the course of life.

So pride and pain are fastened into the heart’s future, while naked and perilous the night and the field glitter. This is the last verse of the poem it is describing the end of life, death. So the start of the sport carnival is the same as the start of life and the end of the sport carnival is the same as the end of life which is death.

Judith Wright has use lots of dominant imagery in the poem that is pertaining to sport. And she has used the story of sports carnival to describe our daily life.

For my opinion this poem is really specific for describing our life its pretty good poem for different of reason.