First Impressions

New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 724, 29 May 1953, Page 10

First Impressions

"THE difficulty of First Hearing to the commentator is that in a single hearing one can hardly do more than outline a personal reaction. The most surprising thing to my mind is the number of poems coming from new sources, The Poetry Year Book, 1952, had half prepared me for other poems from Elsie (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) Locke, though the one in the Year Book might have been the solitary swallow. John Pascoe, however, leapt out of a prose blue with considerable force in his own poeni on Arawata Bill. The words and images showed a sure grasp of local idiom and of the kind of country in which the old prospector worked. This was well read in a typical Kiwi voice which further built up Bill’s character. Whatever second or third thoughts «may bring, Ruth Dallas’s poem, in which all the individuality, passion and colour of life lose their identity in the aged form, made the most incisive impression because in this poem all the images served and gave significance to one single thought. Denis Glover, the 3YC Editor on this occasion, left insufficient pause between the end of the poems and his comments, but otherwise handled the situation with his usual aplomb. Return to Eloquence (CASTING about for a soul-mate who has the courage of his superstitions and likes watching the superior amusement which spreads over the face of the sceptic when you tell him of them, I have at last found one in Compton Mackenzie. In the last of his sessions on

Peoples, Places and Things, he dwelt at ) some length on the ominous influence of | peacocks in his life. The only thing | that worries me about this is that I | seem to have added another omen to my | list. Fortunately, peacocks are few and | far between in this country. Of the three | programmes "Places" was the finest, a session in which, contrary to our colloquial era in which any attempt at eloquence is suspect, the old author in a good resonant voice gave to Patmos, a forgotten city in the East, and a town in Spain descriptions which winged their way far above the plains of reportage.

Westcliff