TWO POETS, A COMEDIAN AND A PLAYER

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 361, 24 May 1946, Page 22

TWO POETS, A COMEDIAN AND A PLAYER

SUMMER FLOWERS. By Denis Glover. Caxton Press. JACK WITHOUT MAGIC, By Allen Curnow. Caxton Press. BAD KING WENCESLAS. By Tremayne M. Curnow. Evening Star, Dunedin. A PLAY TOWARD. By Ngaio Marsh. Caxton Press. (Reviewed by David Hall) HATE to be so condescending when I talk of my betters, but I must confess to an occasional spasm of disappointment as I stroll around and poke my nose among some of the more tousled of Denis Glover’s Summer Flowers. It reminds me that the snag about being a legpuller is that one is sometimes in danger of pulling one’s own quite out of joint. O cursed spite that ever I-was born to set it right! "Invocative" is perfect, a full summer blossom, tossing in a boisterous breeze, fit to win a prize in anybody’s show. The poet, emboldened by love, tells the planets, meteors, oceans, seas, and mountains exactly what to do with it, in brisk compelling rhythm, While threescore black and plumy cats Stalk solemnly before. The other poems have the same superb vigour but jar when they talk of beer, bottled stout, the Last Tram and his love as «see, an electrolux Who sings upon the stair. I know I am meant to be jarred, but I still regret it, especially when I remember the poet’s Spring Blossoms (the "Sings Harry" poems) and "Advice" in this book. As Mrs. Humphrey Ward said to Matthew Arnold in one of Max Beerbohm’s cartoons, "Uncle Matthew, why are you not wholly serious?" "Envoi," now, is very nice, because here you know exactly where you are: it is funny and vulgar. But I am obstinately ungrateful and bloody-minded and wish

these poems, which have so. much guts and gusto, had been written each in a homogeneous mood. * * * ALLEN CURNOW sstirs deep waters in Jack Without Magic and harvests "the sump of opulent tides" of emotion in viscous numbers. These poems yield most after several readings. Their rhythms are slow and somehow clogged, the mood meditative. Curnow is often elliptic; he has felt the influence of the Metaphysical poets — .... heavens accusing Of rainbowed guile, whose penal rains descend but avoids their harshness and contortion of metaphor. The taut lines have more and more packed into them. Curnow makes few concessions. If we cannot follow where he leads, we may as well drop out. : "At Dead Low Water," the longest poem, is also the finest.’ The sonnet is Curnow’s favourite form. In his hands the thing becomes, not a trumpet, but a string quartet at the far end of a long room broken up by pillars. We recognise the austerity and the strength and wish we could hear more clearly every note that is being played. a a * HESE verses by Tremayne Curnow are a selection from some 2,000 comic bits, product of 20 years of versifying, confined, with agonising self-restraint, to some forty-odd pieces. The topics are various, the Pioneers, being aptly praised because They gave the impetus Which terminated in — Us. I think perhaps Mr. Curnow exceeds the clown’s doggy privilege when he lifts a leg against Keats, (Continued on next page) . +.» that soulful chap who wrote About a Grecian urn.

(Continued from previous page) But he sings the trials of the suburban householder with amusing dexterity. The book, poorly produced otherwise, is illustrated by Beegee, whose period scenes are entertaining. Fs Ps ee ‘4 PLAY TOWARD, a note on play production, by Ngaio Marsh, may be recommended to everybody who produces, acts or attends the plays so indefatigibly mounted, year in, year out, by amateur societies all over New Zealand. These are essentially practical hints, but what the reader will most appreciate, if he has either courage or ambition, is the tacit assumption that we can in this country produce the best.

Ngaio Marsh’s advice is addressed primarily to the producers of great plays -of Shakespeare or Synge or Strind-berg-rather than to those who waste their time and talents on the slick and fashionable. A play is "an experience | shared by the actors with their, audiences. This experience is created afresh, with each presentation of the play and is ‘infinitely variable, hazardous and incalculable. . . . Without an imaginative response from the audience a performance can scarcely be said to exist." This book will help both audiences and players to get the performances they desire and deserve. These three small volumes keep up the Caxton Press high standatd of book production; the covers are distinguished by the adroit use of colour printing.