A BUNCH OF POETS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 364, 14 June 1946, Page 16

A BUNCH OF POETS

POETRY: the Australian international quarterly of verse, No. 18, 1946. y (Reviewed by Basil Dowling) F the eighteen poets represented in this quarterly, six are American, one English, one New Zealand (G. R. Gilbert), and the rest Australian. It is very attractively produced, but the contents as a whole are disappointing. One notices in many of these poems a quality of abstractness which betrays a lack of concentration. Taking two poems at random I find these phrases-"the farewell speeches," "the well-wishings, the cheering," "the silence of the bush," "the loud killing," "the slow inglorious torment," "the slow heart-beating,"’ "the distant gunshot and the bursting bomb." Such examples are symptomatic of the weakness common to much fashionable modern verse-writing; a habit of accumulating what I may call adjectival abstractions, instead of defining and specifying with visual distinctness. This habit vitiates many potentially good poems in this collection and makes them seem nebulous and flat. One looks through the pagés in vain for that urgency of direct and simple utterance which is, characteristic of all moving and memorable verse. Somehow they do not haunt us as poetry should, and I suspect the reason is not primarily technical. There are a few stanzas of smooth and easy lyrical charm and some striking lines, but not much evidence of original thought. One wonders how’ many of these writers are patient enough to wait for those moments of passionate observation or spiritual vision which come our way -so rarely but so rewardingly. In other words, the temptation to every poet, once he has launched himself, is to write what is really a kind of metrical commentary on many insignificant experiences rather than the product of a strong emotion that must express itself. It is this sense of inner compulsion which is

most noticeably missing from these poems. They lack that intensity of thought and feeling which can select one of a multitude of sensations and make it luminous in words. Some of the contributors to this journal have established reputations in Australia and elsewhere and it would be pleasant to praise them, but as the mother of a famous English poet once shrewdly remarked to me, "There’s no middle way in poetry-only the best will do."