The Other Gum - Analysis

A public squabble framed as a lesson in aim

Lawson’s poem is a taunting reply that pretends to be an apology while actually laying down a code: if you’re going to attack, at least be brave enough to show your face and be clear about your target. The speaker opens by telling Boory he has read your grin and listened to your whine, as if Boory’s complaint is already a performance, not an argument. From there, the poem keeps tightening one claim: Boory has taken a general satire personally, and he’s responding in the most contemptible way—cowardly, anonymous, and sloppy.

The poem’s fake regret: I never meant to hit

The first stanza stages a kind of damage control: the speaker says he never meant to hit the new-chum Jackaroo and only meant a skit On poets. That phrase does double work. It minimizes the original offense (just a skit), and it also widens the target: Boory isn’t a special victim; he’s part of a whole irritating category. But the apology is undercut by the jab such as you, which turns the stanza into a trap: the speaker claims mis-aim while simultaneously re-aiming—directly at Boory.

The possum in the other gum: misrecognition as insult

The recurring possum image is the poem’s sharpest way of saying: you’re barking up the wrong tree. The parenthetical refrain—The ‘possum you are barking at—insists Boory’s outrage is misdirected, and the odd specificity of the other gum makes the error feel almost comic, like a dog furious at empty air. Yet the line isn’t only about mistaken target; it also mocks Boory’s whole posture. He isn’t hunting truth, he’s barking and howling, noisy and reactive. The speaker can then sound worldly and superior with We’re sinners all, while still calling Boory’s kind damned mean—a moral judgment dressed up as bush humor.

Anonymous cowardice: the real charge

The second stanza sharpens from teasing to condemnation. Boory can sneer in safety, the speaker says, because he’s Afraid to sign his name. That accusation matters more than the earlier dispute about whether the satire “meant” to hit anyone. For Lawson’s speaker, the unforgivable thing is a hit-and-run culture of criticism: fight the crawlers who won’t own their words. He even casts himself as principled—I never strike without a mark—claiming he only attacks when the target is clear. The tension is that this poem is itself a strike: the speaker insists he won’t fight, yet he’s actively fighting, and doing it in print, with relish.

He who hits back in the dark: a warning that doubles as a threat

The poem’s most interesting contradiction comes in its ethics of retaliation. The speaker argues that anonymous blows are dangerous because he who hits back might hurt a ‘friend’. On the surface, that’s a caution about misdirected conflict—another version of the possum being elsewhere. But it’s also a veiled intimidation: if you keep swinging in darkness, you’ll eventually hit someone you didn’t mean to, and you’ll deserve what follows. The scare quotes around friend make the warning colder; it suggests the speaker doubts the sincerity of Boory’s alliances, or suspects that “friends” in this scene are just temporary cover.

A closing dismissal that still can’t let go

The ending tries to end the feud by declaring it beneath notice: The game is stale, your jokes are flat, You might as well be dumb. That’s the final move of someone who insists he’s not invested—while proving, line by line, how invested he is. Even the repeated refrain shifts slightly from other gum to another gum, as if the speaker wants the last word not by resolving the disagreement, but by re-stating Boory’s incompetence: you can’t even locate the argument you’re attacking.

One sharp question the poem leaves hanging

If the speaker truly will not fight anonymous crawlers, why spend two stanzas addressing one? The poem’s own energy suggests an answer: public ridicule is its chosen weapon, and naming cowardice is still a way of enjoying the fight while pretending to be above it.