A World Where News Travelled Slowly - ANALYSIS

The poem “A World Where News Travelled Slowly” is a rather modern Poem written by Lavinia Greenlaw in 1997. The Poem consists of three verses which each describe a different way in which News travelled from one person to another. They are ordered in movement of technology starting off with the oldest way of transferring news and ending up with the modern way of spreading news used in our days.

The first Verse is the very old fashion way of communication between people living far away from each other. It is the simple way of passing carefully handwritten letters from hand to hand until it finally, after probably a few weeks reaches the final destination. This method was used until the beginning of the 18th century. Because this was very slow, it was mainly used for important information, which is suggested by the last two lines of the first verse. “…while the head / had to listen, the heart could wait”. It also suggests that personal letters were rather secondary, and was mainly used to send important news such as in wars and battles.

The second verse represents the change in technology, and talks a “new” quicker way of transmitting news. A semaphore. This was a device

The poem is divided into three verses. Each of the verse has the same amount of lines (eight) which might show that every single verse has the same importance in the poem. Although in the 1st two verses the sentence length is on the whole fairly long, the extensive use of comas gives it a sense of fragmentation. This perhaps reflects the subject of the poem as it describes how long it took for news to travel. The fact that the first verse is only split up into one short sentence and the rest is one whole sentence makes it “heavy” and “indolent” so the reader feels how much work it was to send the letters from hand to hand. The second verse also consists of long sentences, but still divided up into 3 sentences. This again reflects the long time taken by the news to reach the addressee. The last verse has a more punctuated structure and is divided up into 5 sentences. This makes it very staccato and reflects how fast news travels in our days.

Some topics in this essay:
Shape Structure, Lavinia Greenlaw, Paris Lille, , Travelled Slowly”, letters hand hand, poem smoother easier, verse poet, reaches final destination, smoother easier, hand hand, poem smoother, verse split, letter verse, reaches final, final destination, letters hand,