DISTINGUISHED WRITING

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 518, 27 May 1949, Page 17

DISTINGUISHED WRITING

THE PIONEERS AND OTHER POEMS. By Arnold Wall. A. H. and A. W. Reed. Price 15/-. T was in 1903 for the first time that I came across poems by Arnold Wall. Here, it seemed to me, was a writer of distinction; a minor poet, no doubt, but an original thinker, with a sound knowledge and a deep love of English, and capable of grasping "general ideas"; labouring withal under a sense of frustration and utter spiritual isolation: He who among his fellow-mortals seems An alien to our earth, expatriate... . Well, here’s my sleeve. Personal contact served to intensify the impression. For those who have known a greatly changed Canterbury College during the last 25 years only, it may be hard to believe; with memories going back a further 25 years, one can understand why he found his new environment cruelly uncongenial: He dwells with coin grubs and the market mind, Among the putty wits his shining blade Dulls by disuse and its high glories fade. To-day he stands recognised in honoured age as the chief authority in New Zealand on the usages and vocabulary of English, subjects often dealt with in his more recent poems; botanists look to him as a leading authority; to the joy of his friends some balm has been poured on the old wounds. Nét that the scars have vanished altogether: How like that ghost, among my fellows I Emeritus, alone among the throng, Seen yet unseen, an echo and a name, Immune from jealousy, or praise, or blame. ... Facing a large collection of poems, one expects to assimilate them in moderate doses at intervals, It caused me some ‘surprise to find myself absorbed in reading-and often" in re-reading-the whole of these 361 poems, Arnold Wall’s own choice of what he thinks worth preserving. Not many should I care to see omitted; it seems to me that some gratitude is due to the administration of the State Literary Fund for making it possible to include so large a number. About half the "poems illustrate ingenious or original thoughts of a philosophic cast by means of parable and exegesis, with effect often heightened by a paradoxical mot de la fin. At least one of them, "Boy Reading Gulliver," seems to me worthy of a place in any anthology of 20th Century English poetry, There is humorous verse too, and nature lyrics, and satire; "God’s Own Country’ is unforgettable but maybe too Swiftian for anthologists. Of course there are flaws one could pick out; occasional clumsinesses in’ diction and order and rhythm, Personally I put Eileen Duggan and Seaforth Mackenzie on a higher plane. But if Arnold Wall is to be accounted a New Zealander after 50 years, but for these two, I can think of no other New Zealand: poet that I would place above him.

G.W.

Z.