Bruce Dawe has effectively used language to help retell some aspects of human experience. This is especially evident in his two poems ‘Weapons Training’ and ‘Life cycle’ . Dawe has used language in many interesting ways to capture human experience and has successfully drawn the attention of the reader through this use of vivid imagery and realistic tone. He has used a variety of language techniques to help bring his poetry to life and as a result, has helped the reader feel involved in what is happening. This causes the reader to sympathise with the human experiences that Dawe is describing.

The language techniques in Dawes poetry are very imaginative and creative . The purpose of ‘weapons training ’ is to show the dehumanisation of the training for war in the 1970s on the other hand in the poem ‘Life Cycle’ the purpose is to portray that VFL is more than sport, it is a religion to the persona. The tone of ‘Weapons Training’ is very aggressive and abusive whereas ‘Life Cycle’ is very proud of being a fan and follower of VFL and his team.

In ‘Weapons Training’ Bruce Dawe has used language to capture human experience through the use of the rhetorical question used in line 4, ‘are you queer?’. The use of this rhetorical question sets the tone of this human experience/ poem, the tone of brutalisation, of turning a man into a machine, a machine with no feelings or emotions. Questioning a mans sexuality is a great insult to a man, as it portrays to the man that they are weak and un-manly. Insulting a man in this experience was training them to be immune to insults and to make them a lot stronger, mentally. This captures the human experience of war; this is how war-training sergeants were like with their training résumé.

The use of metaphors throughout the poem ‘Weapons Training’ help draw similarities between two things. Therefore another piece of language used to capture ‘human experience’ is the use of metaphor in line 8, ‘open that drain you call a mind and listen’ as his referring his mind to be a drain that information/water that just goes straight through his mind/drain . This metaphor is used again as an insult from the sergeant to the trainee, to once again try and dehumanise the soldiers in the way that they have no emotions as they are preparing them for war and that is what’s needed. This is a human experience during the war and training. In ‘Life Cycle’ poem the use of allusion is used to capture ‘human experience’, “wrapped in club-colours” is an allusion to the experience that Jesus encountered. This has one universal meaning behind it implying that when this child was born (Jesus) he was wrapped in clothing to help keep the child warm. This is portraying the symbolic importance of the game to the persona of the poem. He is classifying his sport as a religion to himself, it’s the most important belief he has within his culture. In today’s society and culture, religion sits next to nothing in the most respected beliefs, so to rank sport next to religion is saying that his sport means everything to him. Human experience is captured in this example, as this is how he was brought into his life, with sporting colours all around him.

The use of pun throughout the poem ‘Life Cycle’ is used to show the resemblance between the two things. One pun used throughout the poem is ‘demon’ in the sentence ‘they will forswear the Demons’. This pun is relating between the VFL team Melbourne Demons and the demons within the spiritual belief. This pun is portraying two meanings; to overcome the Melbourne demons and beat them throughout the season, and that VFL is a religion and his favourite team is God, destroying all demons and conquering. This is part of human experience as this is his emotion to the game VFL; he classifies his sport as a religion.

The use of synesthesia imagery in the poem ‘Life Cycle’ is used to express ones emotion to something . Synesthesia imagery is used when Dawe writes ‘the pure flood of sound’ . Pure once again referring to how spiritual the VFL is to the persona; it is what he lives and breathes for. It also refers to the crowd and all the members in the flooded crowd, all the emotion and people singing that goes into the noise of the crowd. This relates to human experience, as the emotion within the noise of the crowd is so holy for the persona and this is what he feels.

Euphemism is used within the poem ‘Weapons Training’ to express something in different terms. As used in ‘The old crown jewels are safely tucked away’ meaning get ready for war and tuck your precious parts away because the wars going to be physical and life threatening. Also the ‘old crown jewels’ means the mans genitals, therefore to be in this war you have to have genitals, not only physically but mentally in order to fight this war. This is a human experience in many ways as it is the experience many felt in training into going into this war.

Dawe has effectively used various language techniques in many creative and imaginative ways in order to capture ‘human experience’ throughout the poems of ‘Weapons Training’ and ‘Life Cycle’. He has effectively caught the attention of the reader so they are easily able to enhance and take in the human experience into their very own life experiences.