Bruce Dawe is one of the most renowned Australian authors of any generation. He grew up in the 1930s, an era characterized by sparsity and grit. This peculiar brand of tenacity is reflected in his poetry through the various characters and settings. Dawe's work appeals to an older generation and may be lost to adolescents and young readers because of its mature perspective.
Dawe places a particular emphasis on the solitude of each individual. Most of his poems are about a grown man trying to cope with the difficult world around him: social pressures, providing for the family, inner turmoil, lack of time. Ultimately he depicts each person as powerless, a subject to the rigors of life. This does not excuse the individual from taking care of his choices, such as the old man in "Homo Suburbiensis" who tends to his vegetable garden every day in order to have some time alone to think. In fact personal responsibility is the great weight which Dawe places on his characters, perhaps born of his own internal sense of obligation.
As a man, Dawe writes in a particularly masculine tone. His poems are about men, featuring such dominant masculine ideas as war, work, and solitude. While women are certainly featured and participants in these activities, the energy which they bring is markedly different. In "Enter Without So Much as Knocking" for example, the wife, Alice, seems to be enjoying her drive home after a dinner party. On the other hand the husband nags her about driving too fast, how tired he is, how ugly his hostess was. They may be living the same experiences, but their approaches are different. This does not mean to imply that the women are somehow superior, but that the men suffer from a greater sense of responsibility. More is being asked of the male characters. Doubtless this is a reflection of how Dawe interprets his own life events, not out of jealousy but out of apparent exhaustion.
