Mr Baxter's Mirror

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31239, 10 December 1966, Page 4

Mr Baxter's Mirror

[Reviewed by P.A.S.J The publication of this new book by New Zealand’s most provocative and prolific poet is an important event, for a new collection from James K. Baxter invariably enriches our literature. “Pig Island Letters” is uneven in quality, like all Mr Baxter’s books, but a few poems reveal him at top form. These lines, for example, from “At Taieri Mouth,” carry the impact and authority of a major writer: The purple sailor drowned in thighboots Drijtinp where the currents go Cannot see the flame some girl has lighted In a glass chimney, but in five days' time With bladder-weed around his throat Will ride the drunken breakers

This poem and others, like “Tomcat” and “A Takapuna Business Man Considers His Son’s Death in Korea,” show that at his best Mr Baxter is very good indeed.

Unlike most New Zealand writers, Mr Baxter has the courage to court disaster. A high proportion of failures or partial successes is perhaps inevitable in a writer whose output is prodigious and whose aims are so high. Nor is Mr Baxter content to write “safe” poems; he is constantly searching for new modes of expression and for new areas of experience to explore. This probably explains the facility with which he incorporates the work of other poets into his own style. At present the major influence appears to be Robert Lowell, though the similarities between them are as much due to kindred temperaments as to direct influence. Both writers have reacted against a Puritan heritage by embracing Catholicism; both are preoccupied with the past, especially with their ancestors; both are uncompromising critics of contemporary society. Perhaps the most important belief they have in common is in what constitutes the proper concerns of poetry. Lowell has described the “great subjects” of poetry as “death, friendship, love and hate,” and Mr Baxter similarly aims at embracing and exploring these great abstractions. Mr Baxter reaches out towards universal statements through exploration of particular scenes and events, as a glance at the title page will show. Many of his poems have place names for titles, “Near Kapiti,” “ At Rotorua,”

etc., but these are not mere verbal landscapes. The immediate scene is merely the starting point for reflection on some general human problem. The landscape, though evoked in vivid, concrete terms, tends always to take on a symbolic character. Typically in Mr Baxter’s poems the concrete and the abstract, the descriptive and the reflective, lie side by side. For example, in these lines from “Near Kapiti”: "Of such I think, who break their wings on the net Of temperate love; on Kaplti’s lip The black sea spouts up white, as the touch Of the west wind makes the dead Shift under soil . . . Too much Compromise: the hour’s edge is blunted " Mr Baxter’s weaker poems tend to break down in this relationship between the particular and the general. Sometimes the general statement towards which a poem moves is disproportionate to the occasion which provoked it, and a certain hollowness or strain results. One feels that Mr Baxter is trying to make mountains out of molehills. “Henley Pub” and some of the poems in the title sequence suffer from this fault The title sequence consists of thirteen verse-letters to writer Maurice Shadbolt. The satirical tenor of a number of the pieces, especially two, four and eight, explains the title. However, the sequence is by no means confined to satire, Mr Baxter exploits the freedom of the verse-letter form to range widely over a variety of subjects: the nature of poetiy, introspective examination, personal reminiscence, sex, religion, marriage, politics etc. In some poems the informality of structure is taken so far that they degenerate into sequence of fragmentary and barely related jottings, and, generally, the best pieces are the most tightly organised. The sequence as a whole, however, impresses by its vigour and candour. We New Zealanders are fortunate to have in our midst a poet of courage and skill, capable of creating a mirror in which to view ourselves. We may not like or agree with the image Mr Baxter presents of us, but we would be unwise to ignore its implications. “Pig Island Letters" should be read by more than “poetry lovers.” L