POETRY FOR ADULTS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 319, 3 August 1945, Page 16

POETRY FOR ADULTS

A BOOK OF NEW ZEALAND VERSE, 1923-45, Chosen by Allen Curnow, The Caxton Press, Christchurch.

(Reviewed by

M. H.

Holcroft

F it is true, as some believe, that New Zealand literature has entered a new creative period, Allen Curnow’s anthology will be discussed wherever poetry and criticism are valued. Some readers will claim that the range of verse is too narrow, and that it excludes too many promising voices that have a right to be heard. Others may overlook the sustained critical effort of the introduction, and fasten upon passages which seem to them to be provocative. It becomes necessary, therefore, to discover exactly what has been attempted. "In twenty years in a small country," writes Mr. Curnow, "few poets are to be expected, and both aim and plan of an anthology must take account of this." He did not evade the responsibilities of selection: "It. was possible, and therefore seemed a duty, to look at nearly all the verse, of whatever kind or promise, printed in this country in the last 20 years." At the end of his search he found himself concentrating upon the work of 16 poets. In his long and thoughtful introduction, Mr. Curnow examines them as individuals, finding points of resemblance and the beginnings of a common ground, but refusing to, measure them against any personal or ready-made theory. Although he admits the influence of recent criticism, he does not allow himself to be tempted into a search for a thesis, and his conclusions are taken directly from the poetry. There is one omission which I think must weaken the anthology. According to a brief explanation in a footnote, Eileen Duggan’s verse was not available, and the gap is noticeable, If it is true that most of Mr, Curnow’s poets are trying to make a "home for the imagination" in New Zealand, it is equally true that Miss Duggan shares the general effort-though in her case, and especially in her deeper thought, she is concerned with a transplanting of spiritual symbols, whereas the younger poets are looxing for new symbols in a land that supplies no sustaining warmth of tradition. Further, Eileen Duggan has an affinity with Ursula Bethell, whose contemplative verse is deeply religious. These two women, if studied together, would have provided interesting comparisons. There is, however, a range of thought in Miss Bethell’s work, and a command of words, which place her at the centre of the new movement in New Zealand verse. The extent and power of her influence are only now receiving their full recognition. | If I speak of a vement" in verse it may be assumed that the poets are working in obedience to some aesthetic or social.theory. It would be more accurate to say that there is a new and deeper phase, and that it reveals a native quality which in the past was never more than a brief and prophetic appearance. It is significant that Mr. Curnow is able to discover, without any strain upon critical probability, the elements of a general attitude in poets widely difin temperament and method.

Ursula Bethell, D’Arcy Cresswell, R. A. K, Mason, A. R. D. Fairburn, Denis Glover, Charles Brasch, and Allen Curnow are all individuals who have gons their several ways in poetic development. Nevertheless, there are meeting places, Even Arnold Wall and J. R, Hervey, who belong to the older group -as, indeed, does Miss Bethell — have touched the general themes, The fact that all these poets, working in most cases hundreds of miles apart from one another, separated by time as well as by space, should have found for themselves the deeper meanings of isolation, and the solitudes of spirit in a land of practical people — feeling the pressure of all its past emptiness-seems to me to point to a validity of poetic experience. In just the way that our painters are finding colours in the landscape which were veiled from English eyes, so our poets are finding images and ideas that come with a sort of necessity from a background they know to be their own. Of the better known poets in this book, only Robin Hyde failed to reach a consistency of. outlook; and even she, in her vigorous and colourful "Journey from New Zealand," seemed to be at the point of arrival. A second exception may possibly be J. C. Beaglehole, whose "Considerations on Certain Music of J. S. Bach" is an unexpected gift to New Zealand verse. This group of poems, beautiful and disciplined, can at least support Mr. Curnow’s claim that poetry now requires an "adult approach." Yet in one of Beaglehole’s other pieces, when the music of Bach is out of his head, a thought surprises him on a lonely road; and he, too, feels the shadow of that "primeval, all-embracing forest." : Mr. Curnow’s judgments are interesting and balanced; he writes of other poets with an insight into creative processes which makes the criticism responsible. Nevertheless, there is room for differences of opinion. I think he may have found too much in Cresswell’s "Lyttelton Harbour." There is a recognisable emotion in these sonnets for those who know "Present Without Leave," and in spite of the impediments of the diction some lines and images are irresistible. But Mr. Curnow believes that in the best of the sonnets the "archaisms" noticed by E, H. McCormick "become a living speech." My own impression is that the influences of other and older poets have been imperfectly absorbed; and it is these intryding influences, rather than the archaisms, which prevent a complete union of ideas and language, The transitions are a little too noticeable from Wordsworth ("Even as when I stand before you now, You constant hills and you abiding streams") to Milton (" , . . Keep what I did sell In my sore need, some laurels of poor sort") and onwards to Pope ("My verse descend! The town’s but sorry sport"), It is true, of course, that something of the New Zealand landscape does emerge from these poems, even though "Phoebus" shines above it; but impressions that come from Lyttelton via Grasmere and Twickenham seem to me to lose too much energy of communication. I know that literal quotation from other poets is sanctioned by a practice that goes back at least to Milton; but

Cresswell aims at more than quotations: he is taking the texture of his verse from a past that has no associations with the country which supplies so much of his theme. This may explain, apart from any questions of technical control, why I find in Cresswell’s verse a muffled effect which contrasts oddly with the resonance of his prose. For in the greater freedom of prose the archaisms can be drawn without strain into a living style. I believe, too, that Mr. Curnow underestimates the influence of the depression on the younger poets of the thirties, although I know that many others agree with him. It would be a mistake, perhaps, to imagine that a close acquaintance with hard times should have led directly-as it did, admittedly, in Fairburn’s "Dominion"-to a didactic statement of social conditions and antecedents. Could it not more credibly have fostered a new clearness of vision, opening the eyes of poets to spiritual questions that follow invariably upon any widespread loss of security? Time is needed for an acceptance of standards, and this anthology will not therefore be placed at once in its predestined niche. Whatever controversies may arise from it, however, its function seems to me to be obvious and valuable. I think it is safe to say that it throws a light upon the landscapes of poetry in New Zealand, and that those who write verse in the next ten years will feel its influence. To a certain extent the influence can already be found at work within its pages. The youngest poet of them all, James K. Baxter, reveals in many stanzas his indebtedness to the others, though he also has something of his own which may take him later to an impressive achievement. A last word should be said about the publishers. Those who count the number of poets in the anthology who have been sponsored at some time or other by the Caxton Press, and who pause to examine the technical excellence of the book which now brings them together, will find it easier to believe that Denis Glover and his associates have worked faithfully for New Zealand poetry. ON THE RUN IN FRANCE FAIR STOOD THE WIND FOR FRANCE: A Novel by H. E. Bates. Michael Joseph, London; Whitcombe & Tombs, New Zealand and Australia. HIS novel has already gone through two impressions in Britain, and is likely to do the same here. Its prospects are in fact more favourable here, since the New Zealand editicn at 12/6 is better value than most English (wartime) books at a pound, and there is never much competition here in reasonably good novels. The subject is also" a good one for New Zealand-the adventures of a crashed bomber crew on the run in occupied France. They are the lucky ones among us who have not had some reason during the last four or five years to be personally interested in such a situation. But it is staggering to read on the dust cover that the Daily Telegraph reviewer found it "the finest novel of the war"; that the Observer gave it a chance to "hold its own with any war novel written in the last five years"; and that Day Lewis described it for the Book Society as the "work of a true artist in fiction . . . capable of standing up to the reality and satisfying our imagination." All that is nonsense, and it is disturbing to find the reviewers of London circulating it. The book is about half good, and \the other half is worse than a novelist Bates’

reputation should ever have released in his own name. Fortunately the best part is the most important part-the picture of rural France under subjection, the impressions of the countryside, and the personal relations of four men, three of them mere boys, under the strain of flying, hiding, and escaping. There is love-making, too, of course, but it is not very real-with the exception of two moments of morbid jealousy which almost make it authentic. But the really interesting people are the farmer-miller, the village doctor, and the old grandmother who can remember three wars and insists that France was finished in the second, WAR SURVEYS PACIFIC STORY: A. Survey of the Early History of the Third New Zealand Division (Army Board, Wellington). GUADALCANAL TO NISSAN: With the Third New Zealand Division through the Solomons (Army Board, Wellington). BATTLE FOR EGYPT: The Second New Zealand Division at El Alamein (Army Board, Wellington). ~ THE DIAMOND TRACK: From Egypt to Tunisia with the Second New Zealand Division (Army Board, Wellington). O writer of war history has had such a tough job as the author of the two first surveys in this group. He had to make a campaign interesting that never quite came off-and do that after everybody who took part in it was home with his own story; to induce readers to pursue an enemy who, they knew in advance, would never be brought to battle; to give a pattern and meaning to journeys that no one else had succeeded in fitting into a pattern, or making reasonably intelligible; to do justice to the men who did catch up with the enemy, and win respect for those who did not. He had to do all those things in about half as much space as the job called for, and yet he brings it off. The other two surveys carry the Second Division from the Lebanon to Tunis, for we must not forget the Syrian interlude between the first and second Libyan campaigns. But there was of course no fighting in Syria. The Division had no sooner settled in there and begun to train than it was ordered back with all speed to Egypt, and it was then one campaign all the way to the Tunisian coast--a campaign of fluctuating fortunes, with Alamein overshadowing the earlier struggles and the great surrender in Tunisia (200,000 prisoners) making its dramatic end. The maps and diagrams are exceedingly good, and the narrative as good as it is reasonable to expect until all the facts can be told and independent judgments can be made. THE WAR IN ONE VOLUME OUT OF THE SHADOWS: The Story of the Second World War. By Everard Anson. A. H. & A. W. Reed, Wellington. T was a much too ambitious undertaking to try to get the whole war-land, sea, and air-into a single narrative of 125 pages. Still there are people who like others to do their reading and thinking for them, and there are undoubted advantages in having all the history one wants in a single volume. And the author gives them more than history: he gives them the "unfolding purpose" that pro-' vides men of Destiny as they are required, having no more difficulty with Stalin the sceptic than with Churchill and Roosevelt, believers. His purely military perspectives are now and then really illuminating, and his illustrations and maps are helped by his large pages and good paper. Certainly a remarkable six-shillings-worth for those whe want it. |