Poetic Analysis - Magpies by Judith Wright

Poetic Analysis
‘Magpies’

‘Magpies’ by Judith Wright is a captivating and fun poem, which explains the two completely different personalities of magpies. In this poem, the poet positions the reader to see nature as mature, prim and proper, but also extremely greedy and selfish. It successfully uses imagery, movement and sound devices to do this. The poetic devices similes, personification, rhythm, rhyme, alliteration and assonance will be examined in this essay.

This poem is about magpies, animals that are mature and relaxed, but when food appears they lose these attributes and adopt a greedy and selfish behavior. Through this poem the poet wants to communicate that nature has two sides, one being dangerous and risky, but at the same time it brings peace and joy and is expressing its admiration for God. The mood created in ‘Magpies’ is one of relaxation and leisure in the first stanza, until the second where it changes to a frantic and wild mood and then in the third the poet cause the reader to feel admiration and appreciation. This mood causes the reader to feel happy and relaxed in the first stanza, eager and stressed in the second stanza and relaxed again in the third.

Structure and language have been successfully manipulated in this poem ‘Magpies’. This poem consists of stanzas, which means divisions of a poem. This helps the reader to slowly break down the information the poet is discussing in the poem. In ‘Magpies’, the reader slowly realizes through reading the stanzas that the magpies are nonchalant and calm, but when their meal is served they rush into frenzy. The stanzas also help to slow down the poem, making it easier for the reader to understand the split personalities of the magpies. A range of vocabulary and language has been used to help build this split personality that the magpies have. The language used in this poem is interesting but