Analysis of A World Where News Traveled Slowly by Lavinia...

Analysis of A World Where News Traveled Slowly by Lavinia Greenlaw Lavinia Greenlaw’s nostalgic poem â€Å"A World Where News Traveled Slowly,† captivates readers with its brilliant description of the evolution of communication. The poem is chronologically ordered, giving us the effect of how communication moved through the ages. The modern poem is written in three stanzas each describing a different form of communication. Starting from the time when electronics never existed to the current information age. The fashion is which the poem is written, takes the reader on a journey that lasts centuries. The first stanza talks about the old fashioned way of communication. People living far away carefully†¦show more content†¦Literally, it refers to the physical movement involved in a semaphore and how it was interpreted based on the movement of the arm. The line it can also be argued refers to the progress made in science during the French Revolution and in this case the vertical arm could symbolize a pendulum. The Judgment of swing of a pendulum is calculated using complex physics – perhaps people of the time like Leonardo Da Vinci were only just starting to make these calculations around this period. The last stanza represents the modern day in which we live. It is the one we can relate to and mentions what we all go through. However there is a melancholy tone to this stanza. Even though we live in the world of â€Å"nets,† that â€Å"tighten across the sky and sea bed,† that is a world of instant information with fiber optic cables and signals, we still lose what is being told. We do not weigh the messages with enough importance. This poems main theme is one of nostalgia of the past ways of communication. Another, important theme refers to the current act of communication or in fact the way in which it is not possible for â€Å"your voice to reach unaltered.† These two themes are intertwined and refer to the fact that even though communication has evolved into sending messages instantly, we now do not weigh these messages with any importance. â€Å"They leave no trace on us.† The