Peter Skryznecki

Skrzynecki Essay
What are the main themes explored in Peter Skrzynecki’s poetry? What techniques has the writer used to explain and explore these themes?
What are the main themes explored in Peter Skrzynecki’s poetry? What techniques has the writer used to explain and explore these themes?

In the poems A New England Morning, Leaving Home and A Drive in the Country written by Peter Skrzynecki, the poet has explored several different themes, and has used a number of techniques to help the responder understand these themes. The main themes in the poems are journey, sadness, and transitions. Techniques which the writer has included are oxymoron, personification, a mixture of 1st and 3rd person, simile, alliteration, hyperbole, onomatopoeia, surrealistic imagery and juxtaposition. These techniques help us to understand the key themes in the text and follow Skrzynecki on a journey through his life experiences.

A New England Morning is a poem about what an early winter morning is like in the small town of New England. The poem is set on a farm in the town.
The key theme of this poem is the harsh winter morning. This theme is explored with the techniques Skrzynecki has used to paint an image of this early morning in your head. Two of these themes are personification and the rhyme structure of ABCB.
Personification is used to describe the scenery of the winter morning. With the personification he describes the boulders are they “wear moss” which shows the moisture in the air and land that has created the moss which also shows that it is cold. He has also described the homestead as “homesteads nestle against windbreak” which shows they stand strong against the strong winds.
The rhyme structure in the poem is where every second line rhymes. An example of this from the poem is
“As magpies announce a hidden sun — And a this trail of smoke from a chimney Explains how the day has already begun.”
This technique of rhyming makes the poem more interesting to the reader as it can help picturing the image the poet is creating and creates a good flow in the story.

These two techniques, personification and rhyme structure, have helped explore the theme of a harsh winter morning as the way he has used personification to describe the surrounding environment and makes it easy for you to imagine what he sees. The rhyme structure helped explore the theme of the harsh winter morning as rhyming can help explain what something looks like and feels like. The poem Leaving Home was written as part of Skrzynecki’s “Immigrant Chronicle”. This poem is about the journey he took to become a teacher and how he feels pain about his new life away from his family and home.
The theme of this poem is different to A New England Morning as the theme in this poem is journey whereas the other poem’s theme is the harsh winter morning. This shows how many different themes the poet has thought about in his writing.
Skrzynecki explores the theme of journey in this poem by describing his own journey of moving away from his home and beginning a new career in an unfamiliar place. Two techniques he has chosen to explore this theme are surrealistic imagery and simile.
The poet has used simile when he talks about the moment when he leaves his home and family. “We packed the car like a war-time train”. He used this simile to relate to his past when he was younger while immigrating during the war. This shows that he has the same feeling now as he did back then in the past. Surrealistic imagery was used when he describes the pain of a new life in his new unfamiliar home and town without his loved ones. He has done this when he writes, “Dreamt of three headless crows, flying in a room”. As he wrote this, you get the feeling that he is feeling lost and confused.
Simile and surrealistic imagery helped explain the theme of journey as the simile he used shows two different journeys he has taken in his life and shows that he felt the same way, possibly sad and scared, back then as a child and now as an adult. Surrealistic imagery gave you a dramatic image of how he was feeling during his journey.

A Drive in the Country is a poem about when the poet took a leisurely drive into the country but we then find out that he is unhappy with living in the country away from his home.
The theme of this poem is the poet’s troubled state of mind. You begin to understand how he is feeling as the poet used the techniques, personification and symbolism to express how he felt.
Skrzynecki used personification to describe how he sees the environment. “Leaves bent their ears to the ground”.
“She-oaks dipped their hands in the shallows”.
How he has described the trees and leaves shows how he sees them and how he sees them shows how he is feeling. The symbolism in this poem is used to show how troubles he feels. He talks about how there is a child’s swing but to him all he sees is gallows, showing how depressed he feels.
These two techniques paint a very clear image of how the poet was feeling at this time. Both of these techniques expressing the sadness he felt linking the techniques to the theme of his troubled state of mind.

Peter Skrzynecki has shown in his poetry that he is a brilliant poet and author as you can see this in the number of themes he has developed in the different subject of his poems. You can also see the great range of techniques he has learned to use to enhance his poetry and explain the themes.