NEW POETS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 930, 7 June 1957, Page 13

NEW POETS

UNCERTAINTIES, and other poems, by John Press; Oxford University Press, English price 10/6. THE RIVER STEAMER, and other poems, by E..J. Scovell; Cresset Press, English price 9/6. BOTH these poets are unfamiliar to us aS names in modern English poetry. Miss Scovell, one learns from the dust jacket, has already had published two books of verse; Mr Press, on the other hand, is making a first appearance. The Oxford University Press is 'to be congraulated for unusual generosity in taking the risk of publishing the work of a new poet-a risk which most publishers now avoid like leprosy. Mr Press justifies their parental trust. His poems are highly readable, intellectually acute, and essentially normal ’prentice work. But a tendency to abstract language makes his verse too thin at times-

I was exempt from discontent And aching disillusionment. I was immune from pain and grief, Guarded by steady irony: Why did you come, when I was free, To trouble my calm unbelief? This is an example of the good halfpoem (good as exact statement, but only half a poem) which Mr Press writes rather too often. Africa, however, renews in him the fibres of poetry: it horrifies him with violence, in female circumcision. rites; it moves him also (continued on next page)

BOOKS (continued from previous page) to grief and a trace of envy. One feels that he leaves Africa too soon behind. Miss Scovell brings to her poetry a most rare innocence and maturity of heart and mind. Her themes are not unusual-chrysanthemums in a garden, the habits of children asleep and awake, isolation, distance, the mystery of human identity-but her strong delicate poems, like scrollwork done in steel, reveal the truth of her unique experience. The days fail: night broods over afternoon; And at my child’s first drink beyond the Her a i silver in the early light. Sweet the grey morning and e@ raiders gone.

These four lines come from a se quence quite unparalleled, I imagine, in English poetry-‘The First Year," love poems of a mother to a child, in which no trace of stereotyped feeling or language appears. She understands so much and pretends so little. Her descriptive and metaphorical powers match

her insight.

James K.

Baxter