N.Z. Poetry

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28618, 21 June 1958, Page 3

N.Z. Poetry

[Reviewed by W.H.0.l New Zealand Poetry Yearbook, Vol. VII, 1957-8. Edited by Louis Johnson. The Pegasus Press. 79 pp.

It well may be the case that some Christchurch citizens who attended the recent New Zealand Poets’ Festival organised by the Theatre Arts Guild, came away making the good resolution "to read more local, verse. Conceivably, too, some people left shaking poetical dust from off their feet. Those who do want to read more could most cheaply fulfil their desires by purchasing the current Poetry Yearbook, for all those taking part are represented here. Some are at full strength, such as James K. Ba-ter, Louis Johnson and Keith Sinclair; others vend a less heady but still palatable brew —W. HartSmith, Denis Glover and Anton Vogt, for example. There are, too. reasonably representative poems from the two recently dead writters who were celebrated at the festival, J. R. Hervey and A. R. D. Fairburn. It could not be said that this Yearbook as a whole will fill any reader with wild enthusiasm; it is not to be expected that such a representative collection could do this. But it should give the buyer his money’s worth in more soberly pleasurable reading. There is less of the “poetry workshop” atmosphere about this collection than was the case with many of its predecessors; one is not expected to plough through quite so many ambitious failures. The book seems to be a faithful reflection, not of the best of current New Zealand verse (this would be a slim volume indeed) but of the average output of a large body of practitioners, most of them of some standing, a few of them welcome newcomers. There are a few highlights: James K. Baxter’s “Lament” (though this was first published some years ago), Keith Sinclair’s two poems, Paul Henderson’s striking nocturnal landscape “Suburb at Night,” Janet Frame’s “The Dead,” and Charles Doyle's “What We Most Need.” These relieve the otherwise slightly solemn pictures of respectable achievement—as do a few poems which break new ground, or at least bravely attempt, to do so: Erik Schwimmer’s group of three, H. Towhare’s “Thine Own Hands Have Fashioned” (a poem in which one may begin to see Maori and English verse approaching each other), and Alistair Campbell’s curious reflections upon “Oedipus.” all this, there are some expanses of undde tedium: Kendrick Smithyman’? seven-page sequence, conscientious and skilful as all his work is, but also clumsy and flagging as his best is not; Geoffrey Fuller’s rather shapeless eruptions of speech, and Arthur Barker’s stiff /and uncompromising sonnets. Of the new contributors to the Yearbook series, four may be singled out for particular mention. John Boyd, Peter Bland and Gordon Challis are three very competent young men who have until recently been together at Victoria University; there is a professional air about all they do (even about their failures) which augurs well for the future. At the moment they all tend to write according to a currently fashionable English pattern, but this will clearly be only a temporary handicap. The fourth is Kenneth McKenney, an Aucklander whose lyric “Great Barrier” is perhaps the freshest thing in the book; it is a good poem, and (what is rarer) it is good in the poet’s own way, not in a manner he has derived from /excellent models.

More because of its general level of accomplishment than for its' points of high achievement, this Yearbook is as good as any previous one, and better than most. The editor, who presumably gets more annoyance than pleasure from his job, continues to put us in his debt. EVERYMAN’S LIBRARY Evelina, or a Young Lady’s Entrance into the World.. By Fanny Cturney. Introduction by Lewis Gibbs. Dent. 378 pp. “Cah anything, my good sir, be more- painful to a friendly mind than a necessity of communicating disagreeable intelligence?” So opens the first letter in the series making up the novel “Evelina.” The s “disagreeable intelligence” begins a story which captured the reading public of 1778. It was praised by Dr. Johnson as, later, by Jane Austen. . Sir Joshua Reynolds sat up all night to finish it. All ends well and Evelina in her last letter can write “All is over, my dearest Sir, and the fate of your Evelina is decided! This morning, with fearful joy, and trefnbling gratitude, she united herself for ever with the object of her dearest, her eternal affection.” This, ending, Lewis Gibbs suggests, can be foreseen but the difficulty of guessing how it can be brought about goes far towards explaining the attractiveness of the book.