THREE LANDSCAPES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 713, 13 March 1953, Page 5

THREE LANDSCAPES

Sir,-Seeing no outraged comment ‘in last week’s (February 27) Listener about the "Three New Zealand Land,Scapes" of the previous issue, I feel moved to _ protest, in case silence’ is taken as — The three poems are glutted: with, awkwardnesses, obscurities, and difficulties rather unsuitable to descriptive verse. These, together with the usually unsuccessful strivings after effect, distract and dull the intellect admirablyall this instead of the dazzling illustrative phrase and direct simplicity which lifts description to the level of poetry. Mr. Glover’s geological lyric is the most proficient, and perhaps the most "readable," but after struggling through all its distractions and superfluities, one can only ask, "So what?" — Mr. Day’s gloomy prognostications at what I take to be the erosion menace could be put much more explicitly and forcefully in a scientific report, but then he could not weave into that lush accounts of the countryside, or an unusual and uncomfortable nostalgia for Devon --which he rhymes so skilfully with Heaven. : Mr, Mitcalfe’s "Place in the Bush" does not achieve the genuine simplicity and delicacy it needs, so that the effect is generally one of bathos and clumsi-ness-which, however, give it a greater air of sincerity. Another point: Should such evocative verse require illustration to supplement the imagination? Or was the verse inspired by the drawings? However, the drawings contain what the poems leave out; or what doesn’t confuse you in the verse does in the drawings. Together with the advertisements for deodorant toilet soap and health books, the page makes a surprisingly harmonious entity. So I hope anyone reading these’ poems will be moved hastily to turn over a new leaf.

NATURE LOVER

Auckland).