POETRY

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29016, 3 October 1959, Page 3

POETRY

New Zealand Poetry Yearbook. Volume 8. 1958-1959. Edited by Louis Johnson. Pegasus Press. 104 pp. The first thing that strikes the reader of Mr Johnson's latest collection of poetry is the diversity of temperament contained within its covers. Whole worlds seem to separate Barbara Dent from Robert Thomson, and Peter Cape from Marguerite Woolf, for instance. Such variety will seem valuable to many. Mr Johnson way be sure that they will not be “irritated by the apparent lack of central belief and sympathy between one poet’s work and another’s.” It is soon obvious that some good poetry has been written during this last year. Kendrick Smithyman’s “Waikato Railstop,” Alan Roddicks's “The Shell” and “To Read the Landscape,” Charles Doyle’s “A Map of Childhood,” Peter Bland's “An Evening at Home,” and Louis Johnson’s “Girl at a Party” are the first poems that come to mind at this point. Gordon Challis. W. H. Oliver and Denis Glover are also represented in characteristic work.

Many of this year’s poems have in common a sincerity of thought and an attempt to express ideas in terms as precise as possible. Whether the reader believes that any of these particular poems is wholly successful or not, he will not fail to respect the experience that prompted it and the technique that went to its making. “Poetry Yearbook” also contains a proportion of prose. John Summers writes a gracefullyworded page in memory of Miss Blanche Edith Baughan, and the editor makes a short but careful appraisal of the work of the n ev - J. R. Hervey. In an article entitled "Anger or Apathy?” Charles Doyle takes, as he says, a glance at recent New Zealand Verse.” His forthright criticism of those who have set standards tar poetry in New Zealand will “0 no harm, although not everyone would accept his opinions on “Bmes Baxter and Allen Curnow. However Mr Doyle gives his reasons, and these may be scrutinised and, if necessary, disputed. Mr Curnow’s critical views are also the subject of comment, this “tae in Mr Johnson’s preface, unfortunately the text upon Which he bases his remarks, Mr Curnow’s "Penguin Book of New Zealand Verse,” has not yet arrived in the South Island, so that no estimate of the justice of his complaint is possible here. As for Brian Bell’s "Fantasy: Jhe Poetry Marathon,” it may said that it presents the New Zealand intellectual in a particularly repellent light.