THE RIGHT TO SPEAK

New Zealand Listener, Volume 41, Issue 1051, 16 October 1959, Page 13

THE RIGHT TO SPEAK

HEROES AND CLERKS, poems by Philip Mincher; Handcraft Press, 6/-. T is’ part of the professional critic’s repertoire to refer to a new poet as a poet of "promise"; yet these exuberant and untrimmed poems are perhaps most impressive on account of the load of strong feeling and half-forged insights which they carry-feeling and insight which establish Mr Mincher’s right to speak, but hardly yet enable him to reach a mature balance. They promise more than they achieve. Reversing Roy Campbell’s dictum-the horse is undeniably present, a healthy bucking bronco, but the snaffle and the bit are inclined to slip off. The ballad of Barlow, "the man from Mahoanui," is a first-rate poem flawed to second-rate by lack of emotional and formal balanceTill hot by Finch’s stable wall The sniper’s venom squibs Called the matter plain and stitched The waistcoat to his ribs. Stark in the web of history With the blood of his mother’s name, And handled by the border cops As so much shame .. . The first stanza quoted shoyld serve to illustrate Mr Mincher’s superb, ferocious gift of metaphor (the one certain mark of genuine poetic powers): the second stanza illustrates the unfor- tunate florid language into which the poem too readily collapses. At the same time, I have no fault at all to find with Mr Mincher’s traditional sentiments. Consider the "working man’s wife" whom he sees at the cinemaWith flash of child’s eyes on a cut-glass gem Imbibe the powdered pranks of sluts in mink Unfit to touch your garment’s faded hem. Sophisticated readers may find the statement naive; but others will recognise the thud of the bullet in the middle

of the target. None of the twenty-three poems is trivial, and some have as much to say as Basil Dowling, but with a racier movement. The Handcraft Press is to be congratulated on this necessary

publication.

James K.

Baxter