POETRY

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27670, 28 May 1955, Page 3

POETRY

[Reviewed by W.H.0.l Ezra Pound’s Mauberley: a Study in Composition. By John J. Espey. Faber and Faber. 139 pp. New Zealand Poetry Yearbook, Vol. IV. An annual collection edited by Louis Johnson. The Pegasus Press. 103 pp. Australian Poetry, 1954. Selected by Ronald McCuaig. Angus and Robertson. 80 pp. By Wandering Tempest: A Journey to New Zealand in Verse. By A. J. Lancefield. The Mitre Press. 96 PP.

“Hugh Selwyn Mauberley” is a single long poem, whose first five sections are among Pound’s most anthologised work. In the anthologies they usually read as a single poem about post-war decadence; Mr Espey shows clearly that such treatment does less than i^ stlc . e to Pound’s intentions and to the closely knit structure of Mauberley as a whole. For those of Pound’s readers who have gone beyond the anthologies, Mauberley is often the last work of sustained clarity he wrote; a moment of lucidity before the perverse and insane dislocation of the Cantos. fair ly respectable opinion but Mr Espey will not have it. Those w h° have not yet given un the Cantos will find value in this Mr ° dlscuss ion of the persistence of Mauberley themes into the Cantos, and the anticipation of later themes in the. earlier work.

3 . The main part ot Mr Espey’s effort 2 is devoted to literary detective work « of a generally respectable kind. Some- . times—as m the conjecture that there ' m . a ?^ be some meaning in the sharing 8 *2.® ? ame init >als by Hugh Selwyn Mauberley and His Satanic Majesty £ and also in parts of the Jamesian source-hunting enthusiasm outruns , discretion. But usually speculation is J restrained. Further, his erudition turns c up parallels that are both entertain- .’ mg and instructive. It may be re- > marked that this is just the sort of r work Pound expected his readers to be equipped to do for themselves; he J Probably disapproves of the vast labours the American academic indus- ’ tr V s currently devoting to his poems. ’ Mr Espey’s chief evidence does not, r however, come from remote learning. • but from Pound’s own published prose; most of the clues were lying around for anyone to pick up. His interpre- > tation is simple enough. In Part I is ' u- ou - d speaking for himself. He takes his farewell of London, castigates the ; antl-poetic elements fn English life, ■ notes his own allegiances to Engish • poetry, and stakes his claim to be a major poet in the tradition so marked ; out. In Part 11, on the other hand, > Pou p d impersonates the sort of ; aesthete who does not escape in time, who cannot resist the power of those who smother poetry with selfish atten- ; tions, a poet whose passion is reduced ’ to mere annotation and gesture. Mau- ; berley, it is suggested, •is what Pound might have become had he stayed in London. Instead he became the author of the Cantos. At this point the reader who distrusts Pound will underline Mr Espey’s comment—“ One is struck by the disparity between the astonishing complexity of its surface and the apparent simplicity of its base, a disparity that comes close to being disconcerting.” (p. 81). But this objection is disposed of; Pound’s whole endeavour, here and in the Cantos, is to respect the complexity and even the raggedness of experience, never to simplify, to summarise or to generali ise. Interpretation aside, Mr Espey points to some underlying influences upon the work. Gautier is basic to its attitude—its attempt at sharp delineation; Gautier’s quatrain crossed : with the “syncopated” Greek verse of Bion go to form its manner; Henry James, Remy de Gourmont and Jules I Laforgue supply many of its recurrent themes. In all, this critical work is 1 one that will certainly enrich the experience of anyone who has already , enjoyed the poem. Pound seems to have had small in- ] fluence upon New Zealand verse. This 1 may be unfortunate, for he is 1 thoroughly anti-romantic. Above all, ■ his is a cool recording intelligence • moving among words and objects. He j is hard to follow just because he re- 3 fleets so faithfully the flux he observes, 1 because he never imposes order upon 1 a chaotic world. Unlike Dylan 1 Thomas, whose pen is still busy in ' these islands, he is rarely beyond the ‘ effort to comprehend, though some- • times he may not be worth it. The - more usual modern method, and the : essentially romantic one, is for the • poet to his insides terribly seriously, to rearrange the external world : so that it shall not turn its sharp edges i upon his vitals. And this is the usual method of the poets in Mr Johnson’s fourth “Poetry Yearbook.” 1 It is hard to see that any “older” s poet’s reputation will be greatly t altered by the work in this book. Its x keynotes are competence, hard work and continued progress along the same lines. There is one notable exception. Mr Arthur Barker, best known for his translations, turns up with a hardhitting dramatisation of tunnelling and tunnellers which provides a solid answer to those perennial wiseacres who deplore the distance between the New Zealand writer and the average 1 citizen busily subduing nature. That the wiseacres will take comfort from the answer, is, at the mildest, unproven. But the main use of Mr John- ; sons annual random harvest (in his < introduction he rejects the role of < editor and assumes that of collector) ; is to record the sound of new voices. ] If, some years ago, young poets . could be reproached for informality, j they now seem to suffer from too much i formalism. To take three new names 1 in the Yearbook, John Cody, Ross 1 Crothall and Richard Packer, the first c and the third suffer from an evident ] determination to compose correct < stanzas. Their vigour and fluency, real enough, is marred by an exterior < compulsion to fill up a line with a ] rotund, but often superfluous, adjec- < tive. Mr Crothall is formally looser, < but verbally more precise, just be- s cause he is less concerned to dis- s play his craft. Another new t man, John Kasmin, also writes i exact stanzas, but with much more ’ economy. Mr Crothall’s “Portrait,” Mr 1 Cody’s “Original Sin on a Weekday,” ] Mr Packer’s “Quasimodo,” and Mr 1 Kasmin’s “Songs for Christmas” have, ] it is worth noting, the same pre- i occupations that the editor himself has < made his special province in New Zea- i land letters: the urge to detect the ] glint under the dross, or (more 1 usually) the rot under the perfect £ make-up. Perhaps one can start to i talk about a “school of Johnson.” Like T him again, they are prepared to shout • their insights into our ears; they pay us the compliment of being anxious that we should hear them. In general, “Poetry Yearbook” could « do with rather more rigid editing and " selection; Mr Johnson has standards » which he seems not always to apply. This criticism, however, does not deny that all in this country concerned with literature owe him a great debt for his ; yearly and surely arduous labours. The ; “Yearbook’s” Australian sister-volume i suffers, on the other hand, from an 1 excess of editing. The blurb on the 1 dust-jacket (the only policy statement s in the book) mentions the editor’s i "predilection for poems about people 1 and scenes brought alive in action,” ; for ballads and for’ quasi-ballads. < Ballads may be very good or very bad, ; and rarely fall between. It may be no more than the New Zealander’s rela- i tive effeminacy which makes me I shrink from much of the verbal clank- < ing. the hearty coyness, the platitudes, j and the shameless local colour to be 1 fond on many of these pages. But some , poems in this tradition do not suffer ( from the same refusal to be intelligent i (surely a dubious way of aiming at . popularity): David Rowbotham’s j “Mullabinda,” Kenneth MacKenzie’s , “An Old Inmate,” and the editor’s “The Problem Farmer.” But apart = from these verses, there are two very „ striking poems indeed—quite above J New Zealand’s “Yearbook.” First i there is a delicate and wonderfully ? simple love song by Tom Healy in c what must be aboriginal pidgin Eng- ? lish; second there is Hal Porter’s “Suicide Farmer.” In this poem the Aus- ; tralian scene, laid on like cosmetics by 1 the facile balladists, penetrates so ' deeply that it need never be specified a the whole of a brief description of the z suicide of a farmer who found the a land too cruel. a A. J. Lancefield’s “By Wandering r

Tempest” will embarrass most New Zealand reviewers; so much affection for this country is expressed in such bad verse. The verse is of that lifeless and stilted variety usually called “traditional”; the author is diffuse always, playful sometimes, and terribly in earnest very often. He must, his verse aside, be an exceptionally amiable individual. Christchurch denizens will relish his praise for her autumn foliage, but they will hardly agree that the “warm” nor’-wester reaches the city from “the tropic sea.”