POETRY

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28471, 28 December 1957, Page 3

POETRY

[Reviewed by IV.H.OJ Poems.. Kenneth Slessor. Anrtu and Robertson. 116 pp. Poems, 1940-55. Ernest G. Moll. Angus and Robertson. 238

PPThe Song of Hagar to the Patriarch Abraham. Ethel Anderson. Edwards and Shaw. 18 pp. The production of poetry may not yet be a major, industry in Australia, but it is clearly a well-established one. One large firm, Angus and Robertson, are the chief producers; from this house emerges a constant stream of collected volumes and new books. In book design and typography there is a marked lack of imagination and daring, but the books are at least competent productions—the type is readable, the paper pleasant, and the binding good enough to enable the reader to open the book without breaking its. spiiie: quite a few New Zealand book producers could take note of this last feature. What Angus ahd Robertson lack in/imagination is more than made up-for by p smaller Sydney firm, Edwards and Shaw, who have of recent years produced a series of books of sometimes exquisite craftsmanship.

Australian poets, then, are being well served by their publishers. But what of the quality? Is Australian poetry being so well served by its practitioners? The three books under review suggest that the answer might be a conditional negative. There is much here, and elsewhere in Australian literature, to suggest that the zeal for print is • not an. entirely literary phenomenon. There may well be a sort of cultural nationalism hovering over the heads of Australian poets and publishers; they evidently want to produce the goods, and they certainly do produce them, but they do not seem to look closely enough at the quality of the article. Kenneth Slessor is a case in point. Many Australian critics think particularly highly of his work; the dust jacket claims that he would be outstanding in any company. The poems in this collected volume were written between 1919 and 1947—that is, m «, e , age of Eliot - Yeats, Pound, Wallace Stevens, John Crowe Ransom, Auden and Thomas. Is Slessor outstanding in this company 7 No, he is a very small voice indeed. Even on the home front he is outdistanced by such contemporary Australians as A. D Hope and James McAuley. His great local reputation is probably due, not to his stature as a poet, but to his skill ns a versifying map-maker. Three poems in this book, “Captain Dobbin,” “Five Visions of Captain Cook,” and Five Bells,” reflect a poetic exploration of Australia, the Pacific, and the process of, oceanic discovery which locates Australia quite firmly in the flux -of world history. They are good poems, worth anyone’s attention, and no doubt Australians are properly grateful to Slessor for writing them. But they don’t really put him among the w . ? : Erpest 1 a, not dissimilar poet. That he writes (or at least prints) a great deal more than Slessor, makes his bulky volume the less digestible. But he has his points, even if they are unspectacular ones. He writes carefully, and his usual style is quite untouched by any novelty introduced into English verse singe thq z Great War. He is philosophical in an equally oldfashioned . ' sense—he ruminates and he comments, his is a hoknely wit enlivened by a. certain academic sharpness. All this would lead naturally to the conclusion that he ought not to be able to write good poems, but in fact he makes his rather shopsoiled language . perform some surprising tricks. “Girl Surfing in War-time,” “Spider,” “Jonah at Nineveh” and many of the poems in this final section of the book rise to heights which more celebrated poets may envy

With Ethel Anderson the case is more clear. On the face of it this revamped Biblical incident is no more than 'an excuse for a piece of fine printing—and the printing is very fine indeed. But even so, one distinguished Australian, the composer John Antill, thought well enough of this poem to set it to a full orchestral and vocal score. But what are we to make of a section of 36 lines in which one four line stanza is repeated three times, and of the remaining 24 lines, no fewer than eight are supplied by repeating the somewhat flat line ‘‘My feet cannot follow your feet”? The Biblical writers certainly went in for repetition and parallelism, but scarcely to this extent. Perhaps it sounds well as an oratorio, but as far as the book is concerned, the

most striking features are the very pleasant green end-papers, and the line-decorations of Roderick Shaw.