The Land and the Poets

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 942, 30 August 1957, Page 16

The Land and the Poets

THE pee eek) by Charles Brasch; Caxton Press. 15/- FIRE PHOENIX, Bad W. #H. Oliver; The Caxton Press, 12/6 ‘

(Reviewed by

Joan

Stevens

HARLES BRASCH does not hasten lightly into print. This is only his_ fourth volume in nearly 20 years, and like the others, is deeply pondered. His titles reveal the essential continuity of his themes-The Land and People, Disputed Ground, and now this, The Estate. The land of which Brasch writes, disputed or possessed, is both an actual countryside, our own, 4nd that country of mind and spirit in which man’s aspirations seek a home. Mountains, sea voices lyric or menacing, the poplared southern landscapes, are both real and symbolic, and man, as Brasch saw him in his earlier poetry, is in the midst of them a being uncertain. We -nhabit- . an earth, an island laid on those who accepted its possible image Need and compulsion, and allegiance divided. In this new book, the Ground is no longer Disputed. The exile finds himself, and inherits his estate. Allegiance is not divided, "separateness falls away," and man now "knows where he wiil lie down at night." The Estate, a long poetic sequence which gives the book its title, is the record of this homecoming of the spirit, as of the body. Here, the continual "meeting. and parting’ which has haunted Brasch’s poetry, is accepted; individual difference is seen to have its own value; the poet finds that separateness is not necessarily loneliness. Through friendships, he learns that he lives "singly, divided, without isolation; at one in drawing breath with all that breathes." His loyalties are focused, his direction more sure. This, if you like, is the Godwits in Reverse. For Robin Hyde, godwits symbolised the creative artist, driven by in-

stinctive urges to leave these shores. Brasch studies the Exile Returned. "Have mortals nothing anywhere they can call their own?" he asks, in an epigraph from H6lderlin (. .. haben die Sterblichen denn kein Eignes _nirgendswo? .. .) What old roots live? What new limbs grow? In what sense can a man call this land of ours his own? Or in it find his way "in the shadows of this disconsolate age"? The Estate is the record of a search and a finding. Because it is friendship that has shown Brasch the way, the poem is a tribute to his friends; they have supported him in his trust in the "personal light men live by," and have given him a sense of belonging to land and people. In form, The Estate is a series of meditations varied by lyric pauses. It centres about a house and garden, the "hortus conclusus,’ precinct where friends meet and "focus im quiet" upon man’s image and meaning, much as a previous group did in Ursula Betheli’s "High Garden" on the Cashmere hills. The major sections have a long wavelength, suited to the mood of consideration, to: the letter-like ease of movement, Occasionally the music of Eliot lingers too insistently in the air. Eliot has so impressed upon our time his patterns of house, landscape and season, that a poet dealing as Brasch does with philosophical involvement and_ the "difficult months" of renewal must find it hard to escape echoes. But there are many and continued felicities, too extended to quote here, and the steady onward flow accumulates force. . The lyrics modulate to a lighter key, but do not deny the mood. Three in particular cry out to be sung-No. Xxxii, "White star on the mountain ridge"; No. xxx, "Thistle, briar, thorn"; and loveliest of all, "Fall till day’s end fall,’ No. xx. This has an_ intricate delicacy not often met with in our poetry. The Estate keeps a nice balance between meditation and music. It is quiet verse. You must co-operate with "(continued on next page)

it, it does not seek to master you, or to impress. But there is no doubt in my mind that it is a major work. The other items in the volume vary in effectiveness. Several are descriptive, like our Academy watercolours, and seem to have little value beyond this. Three-"Autumn in Spring," and the two Thurlby poems-are linked in theme and manner with The Estate. Duri Miles Ulixi is a study of the "hero of the famous flash," an impression to be added to Glover’s two poems on our "soldier for all service, mortal currency of time." The Estate is a very Wordsworthian book. At the heart of it (Nos. xxiv and Xxxiv) is a mountain journey, where the "white inquisitors" question a man’s motive and test his faith, Autumn trees foreshadow the "death of man’s estate"; planted park and garden outline mortal hope and achievement. As Wordsworth did, Brasch finds peace and understanding through human companionship and in the natural scene where we "study silence, ask understanding," and "live from the pure spring of life." An impressive achievement. W. H. Oliver’s Fire Without Phoenix gathers together poems old and new, written at home here and At Home abroad. In the longest, "In the Fields of My Father’s Youth," Oliver weighs one Home against another. Which is really his? Every New Zealander who makes the journey back today makes it in the light of history, in time as _well as in space. He has to stir up old "waters, come to terms with ancestor worskip. His past rises to meet him in English lanes, and with it that future now frustrated, the dead "pilgrim dream," which seems so faded in our descendant present. The pattern is familiar, but Oliver turns it a new way; although only his father’s garden "full of surprising fruit" now stands as the outcome of the emigrant dream, "the dream flower faded, cynically abused, the song of equality become a bribe," yet the son affirms a double loyalty. Can I who live by his flight relinquish either The peasant’s dream or the eloquent manor ouse Both were his first and every birthday gift. The poet himself, at least, can keep an undivided allegiance; Ais fields are not disputed ground. Not yet, though "the breaking point, where loyalties depart," may well come soon. These are not the sentiments of Brasch’s genera-tion-so that the two poets are complementary. Oliver has a gift for the untrammelled visual phrase, a poetry of clear bright objects turned this way and that, until an inner meaning glows. ("Sea Legend," "In Radcliffe Square," "Sleep Will Come Singly"). His figures are simple, and have an apocalyptic strength behind them, -without the upholstery of some current rhetoric. Then will the meek man find his blood restored, Tall a an antelope walk through bright Ss, Speak with a flower in his tongue and listen to men With & fm cage of his ear; on the Of SR trees climb to heaven again. We could do with more of this magic today. . . But how tired I am of sestinas! S( sniff) F SPACE, TIME AND ag nena ~ Brian W. Aldiss; Faber and Faber, thee 12/6. THUNDER AND "b by dore Sturgeon; Michael Joseph, Er 12/6. PES 2 you a Smoof or a Smot? You'll "out in Police Videofile of sf-writer Aldiss’s Criminal Record stery just what they are. Maybe you have a yearning to win the shubshub race, which only a pseudoman with the electronic consciousness

of an instrument can do, thus enabling him to’ function at one basic rate anywhere in the galaxy? Or find out what a Psyclops thinks-a spaceman’s unborn child having a pyschofoetalist confab with his old man. Then there’s Pogsmith, and dear old Pogsmith is only a sort of planetary pig up to all the tricks of legendary Proteus. And there are Non-Men and Nititians. And young Alistair, who rightly decides against being elected to the August Order of Eunuchs in favour of being resident governor of the planet Acrostic I. The stories in this book are full of fantasy and fun: Mr Aldiss has a youthful exuberance that even makes fun of the dreary problems of space. He throws in an introduction on sf which is earnestly ingenuous. "In its time, sf has been dismissed because it is idle fancy, mere gadgetry, basically unscientific, too scientific, paints too grey a picture, is too highly coloured, is not escapist enough, is just a modern fairy-tale." But, he coolly observes, "likely and unlikely are the same word. . . Like poetry: perhaps that’s the best simile, for sf and poetry have much in common. Both have a sly, surprising music; neither are particularly easy to write." And certainly it would be difficult to put Videofile B/1191214/AAA into any Miltonic sonority on the creation or the universe. Thunder and Roses and Theodore Sturgeon. "His, indeed, is the Way of Imagination, and it leads him, and us, to strange, far places," gravely announces Michael Joseph. But let’s get down to it-the planet Lirht (with three moons, one of which is unknown) is inhabited by gwik, whose favourite pets are the hurkle, and the prettiest of the hurkle are blue; and space fiction whimsy, as Theodore Sturgeon writes it, is much more agreeable than the thin galactic milk of the 20-G men who always remind me of over-heated traffic cops, skimmed off here or there without a laugh. Thanks to science, both Sturgeon and Aldiss take us unscientifically into a world where chess would be playable without a board, and, anyway, the telephathic dog tells you how to build a spare part for a dubious sort of space ship (dear little doggie, pune into the river to rescue the baby girl of the great big rich man who pays the bill for the gold-molybdenum spare part). And it’s just this kind of mimsy-whimsy that inclines me back again to the Brick Bradford boys. In the title story we don’t retaliate in the atomic war because a film star called Starr Anthim croons us‘into turning the other cheek: You gave me the night and the day, And thunder, and roses, and sweet green The sea, and soft wet clay. ; The Enemy has annihilated us, presumably not listening-we, Starr-struck, forbear to pull the lever. Thunder and roses and holy Moses, I'd sooner eat my mushrooms off a short-handled spoon.

Denis

Glover