Summary Of Continuum By Allen Curnow

‘Continuum’ composed by New Zealander poet Allen Curnow. The poem’s main idea is to imply the writer’s block Curnow is experiencing. It also reveals two personalities or two states of single mind, first, as he refers being the ‘author state’ and the other being ‘himself’; even in the poem few lines seem to be written by his poetic self while other by ‘himself’. Furthermore, the writer’s block doesn’t only affect his poetic inspiration but also his sleep. The poem doesn’t seem to be addressing anybody but can be depicted as his own trail of rapid thoughts, juxtaposing each other. Allen Curnow being widely known as a satirical poet writes about ‘author-self’ from the point of view of ‘himself’ with a hint of sarcasm.

Curnow starts off stereotypically by stating ‘Moon rolls over the roof and falls behind’, as most of the poets seek nature’s help for inspiration and personify it to convey their thoughts but further he states ,the first two lines to be his perspective, as it is him who is looking at the moon in a way that it might seem it is ‘ rolling over the roof and falling behind’. The next stanza reveals his inability to come up with a poem due to his writer block and therefore he decides to seek help from nature, this stanza also states his writer block driven him to insomnia. In the next stanza, he is seen to be observing surrounding in search of a poetic inspiration. As he goes on, we witness a revelation of his ‘poetic self’ as adversary. He then shown to be standing