i need a critical analysis of john foulchers poem 'raymond wells and the burning' including what the poem is about intended audience and poetry terms used in the poem. i could also use the time it was pubished and printed. needed for a skool assignment. thanks

Sorry, I couldn't find much on him...only one hit to be exact.

[www.thylazine.org]

Raymond Wells and the Burning
---John Foulcher


I snatched Raymond Wells
from the sea of new green blazers
on our first day in high school.
With his rolled rubber face and clumsy smile,
he would lumber to class
flanked by his bag and his shabby trombone.
Then his orthodontist clamped him
helplessly to caricature,
and I sensed that I was drifting

    to other, colder friends who’d swell with sniggers
    when he tumbled out of English,
    always afraid of being late,

or lost. I kept sight of him, though,
out on his horizon,
and sometimes I’d steal
through the wild, untended park
between our houses
to sit with him in his living room
where his aging mum
would fuss and be proper. Numb with manners,
we’d dawdle to his bedroom

   and he’d polish off a song in brass.
   Always when I left, a shiver coiled through me,
   as I paced the rooted darkness of the grass . . .

Around that time, someone
waited in the dusk
and pounced on a schoolgirl
ambling home through the park - he held her down,
basted her with kerosene, fired her
and ran. The papers said she rolled and flapped
for a while, until the flames
had lined her lungs
with a crust of crackling air. . .

    Soon after, I passed that char. It was wide and bare
    like a scream. It was as if the flames
   had gouged the earth apart.

I never went back there,
I chose to join the jeering - Raymond Wells
and his mad mother
in their pinched and dingy home,
his fixed metal grin
and his bloated adult belly.
But, sinking in the whirlpool
of normal friends, I‘d often think of him
passing that burnt place

   every day, lugging his tinder-dry tunes
   that would catch and sweep through his room
    and smoulder in his dreams.


Les

Tegan, there's more info. here:

[www.google.com] />

Les

i need to find the historical background of john foulchers poem 'the missing person' I could also use the message or meaning to this poem, what the poem is about and the techniques.
thanks peopls.. if you can help me!!

sally

Can you post the poem here?

pam