THE LOWER SLOPES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 887, 3 August 1956, Page 14

THE LOWER SLOPES

COLLECTED POEMS, 1927-1955, by Bryan Guiness; Heinemann, English price 15/-. THE WITNESSES AND OTHER POEMS, aa Clive Sansom; Methuen, English price How good is a good minor poet? Perhaps within a very generous estimate Mr. Guiness would qualify. Plato excluded all poets from his Republic; and we must beware of the wish to excluce, on different grounds, all tame, weak, ’prentice work. Mr. Guiness can write with some felicityThe night stands trembling on the tips of towers In waiting for her paramour the day; Before his kiss her deep blue body cowers And at his touch dissolves in disarray. It is called, appropriately enough, "Sunrise in Belgrave Square," and represents the Muse’s response to Mr. Guiness’s prolonged and rather queasy courtship. Mr. Sansom’s work has deeper virtues and weaknesses. He never quite reaches the naked clinch with a mystery which could rejuvenate his language. Like our New Zealand poets of the first quarter of this century, he can be arch and wil-. ful as a lady with a fan-or an idiot child. Like them he is too often an ornithologist. Joy comes oftener to him than to his reader. But his grip on language, often slackened, is never quite relinquished. His dramatic commentary on the life of Christ, "The Witnesses," though marred by a breath of Y.M.C.A, blunt familiarity, has real statureHalt! Here’s the place. Set down the cross. You three attend to it. And remember, Marcus, The blows are struck, the nails are driven For Roman law and Roman order, Not for your private satisfaction. . So speaks the Centurion, at least with relevance; and ends his soliloquy-‘"Ah, well, poor devil, he’s got decent eyes." One is led to consider how far the peculiar limitation of English middleclass society have aided, and how far strangled, a strong and genuine talent.

James K.

Baxter