A NEW ZEALAND POET.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIX, Issue 237, 3 October 1908, Page 11

A NEW ZEALAND POET.

Mr. B. E. Baughan's new volume of New Zealand verse, entitled "Shingleshort and Other Verses," comes in for high praise from a "Daily Telegraph" reviewer, who describes it as "the most notable individual expression of poetry we have had to welcome from New Zealand; his work may not appeal to all readers, but it has admirable qualities which no true lover of poetry can fail to recognise. There is a ruggedness in the versification," adds the "Telegraph," "which may jar upon those to whom smoothness is the first essential. Smoothness is by no means everything. As in sculpture a score of clean-rounded busts are scarce noted beside one rugged example of the work of M. Rodin, so in poetry much of the technically faultless rhyming of magazine poets impresses U3 far less than the irregular rhythms of a writer such as Mr. Baughan. 'If you see well, you're lord of what you see,' sings one of the greatest of our living poets. The writer of this volume sees, feels, and thinks, and has a distinct gift in rendering that which is, seen, felt, and thought in an almost colloquial but nevertheless true poetic style.-