AUSTRALIAN POETS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 768, 9 April 1954, Page 14

AUSTRALIAN POETS

| THE GIFTED SPEAR, by Ernest G. Moll; THE GATEWAY, by Judith Wright; POEMS, by W. S. Fairbridge; all published by Angus and Robertson at 15/- each, Australian price. ANGUS AND ROBERTSON are doing for Australia what Caxton has done for New Zealand, and compari- | son is invited. They must be commended for publishing contemporary verse, in editions that have small chance of making much profit. But, in my insular opinion, the verse is not as good as the local product; and the books are not so well turned out. At this distance our poetic traditions seem antipodal. Australia began strongly, New Zealand sentimental!y. Now the roles are reversed: Curnow’s | intelligence and = sensitivity, Fairburn’s | glow and buoyancy, Glover’s kick and clarity, Johnson’s sensuousness, Sinclair’s gaiety, Baxter’s strength and sense of tradition, find small parallel across the Tasman; and almost none in the volumes under review. The LawsonDennis tradition is emasculated, leaving verse so restrained that it fails to move. Interestingly enough, "restrained" is a word appearing on all the jackets, suggesting that the publishers are proud of it: so that I am reminded once‘more of Roy Campbell’s famous lines, begin- ning, "They praise the firm restraint with which you write..." Another phrasé used on every jacket is "technical control," which I suspect

is a literary cliché to switch one’s mind from the matter to the manner. The matter is matter-of-fact enough. There are spiders and spears in Moll, forests and clearings in Fairbridge, trees and pools in Judith Wright. But the manner is so sophisticated that it only succeeds when it is meant to be clever. Fairbridge, who died three years ago aged only 31, seems to me quite the best of these poets. Something of a_ scientist and historian, he has themes to match an ironic technique. Writing on Darwin, he could say: Little he seemed of rebel stuff: A gentleman, and sociable enough: Trailing to Tunbridge for the water-cure. A dull-born, obstinate, thick-handed man In cloak and beard, and comical round hat. Almost a butt to some at Down, save that Beneath the shag brows’ anthropoidal span Gleamed a crepuscular intelligence . . . Moll, in the "Fable of a Neurosis," is equally neat: As spiders go, he was more civilised Than most, and strung his web a little tighter, With knot and brace more cunningly devised To take the strain, because his thread was lighter .. It is, perhaps, my New Zealand humour that suggests that these lines all belong to Cambridge dons rather than to any dinkum’ -Aussie. Judith Wright, who has the greatest Australian reputation, is more local and _ less "clever"; but she seems to me rémantically soft. We have writers of her kind here, but they are not our best. She asserts the glory of her countryside, and the passion of love, but she does not transmit them to the reader in the great tradition of English verse. I am inrterested, but never deéply moved.

Anton

Vogt