Denis Glover—a tribute

Press, 12 August 1980, Page 16

Denis Glover—a tribute

By

Allen Curnow

Poet, humorist, scholar — he majored in Greek and read-the Latin classics — master-printer and a scholar in typography, too, pioneer publisher before a literary fund made the game easy, clever welter-weight boxer, sailor and naval officer decorated D.S.C. in the Normandy invasion, university councillor,’ Turnbull Library and Literary Fund committee-man, but always and to the last a poet . . . was this Denis GloVer? A mere list of accomplishments? His death must excuse, the recital. A few facts to steady my memory. Elusive in public, sometimes wilfully so,‘in friendship he stands for my absolute. Others who know him well- will not need me to speak of his candour and truth, his loyalty, his un-

measured affections, his unerring sense of the false and the true in life and in art/ It is one thing to tell about a friendship unbroken for nearly 50 years: another, to commemorate a great fellow-countryman and fellow-poet, whose extraordinary gifts and achievement we shall need time to appreciate. . It may take time, too, before the true distinction of his best poetry is realised. He. will always have readers. Tliat is another matter. I mean that his best, by the strictest judgment, will survive passing fashions. , Over the past 20 years he allowed into print a good deal that was careless, even slipshod, along with much that is finished and fine. But how much of the best there is. I am looking at his five

volumes of verse Since 1971. The careless pieces are there, like holidays from serious effort: so are the glistening clarity, the achieved personal style, of “Sings Harry,” “Arawata Bill,” and poems of the sea, of love and women, of war, of death and the thought of death. ‘What is perfection?’ then I said, ‘For type and coffin, both are lead. ‘For those who sought it, did their best ‘And now find honourable rest, ‘Dead, dead, dead.’

All poets are egotistical. They have to be. Glover knew and mistrusted the “literary” ego in himself. First-rate poets always do, second-raters never.

It was partly this mistrust — and a stubborn honesty, not to disown any verse once committed to paper — this, as we as carelessness and what was left of poet’s vanity, which allowed him to publish some work which his keener critical sense might have suppressed. Should this be regretted? I believe not. A Glover scrupulously edited down to “the best” would not be Glover as he was, and is. I know about that keener sense of his. F.or 40 years he must have seen nearly everything I wrote myself, beforepublication. His eye for a fault, a lapse of style or judgment, was uncannily acute. From the first, we saw each other’s new work, and pulled no punches. He always knew, too, when a disagreement was about something in the nature of the poet, beyond the reach of comment or advice. In his own nature, poet and active man were at odds. It was never a case of the sensitive poet with a nostalgia for active life: both impulses were always strong. Until the war years, the active man had to be content

with printing, publishing and cruising club sailing. Aged 29, by then a naval trainee at King Alfred in England, he fought. (and lost), a heavyweight boxing final. Service on Murmansk convoys followed — for which he holds a Russian decoration, recently conferred — then a commission and command of a small ship, finally the Normandy landings. “Denis was the bravest officer I had. We felt better because he was there.” So said Rubert Curtis, his flotilla commander, in 1974, over lunch at the Army and Navy Club, in London. But even in the navy, the sailor on leave sought poet’s company — Charles Brasch and D’Arcy Cresswell, both then in London, and among English writers Day Lewis, Stephen Spender, William Plomer and John Lehmann. Dr John Johnson, then

printer to the Clarendon Press, Oxford, was happy to discuss fine printing and book production with the sailor on leave. As the active man sought out poets, s.o the poet wrote about active men and scenes of action. They were, perhaps, his most constant subject — as of few other poets I can think of.

Among many such poems is the near-perfect little elegy on John Pascoe (from his 1978 volume, "or Hawk on Basillisk”) with its ending, You taught me to cross a river, Johnny, In a way crafty and clear. But what more can I say of the mountains, Johnny, What more of the mountaineer? He died as he was moving into “a smallish place at Breaker Bay, commanding Barrett Reef and Pencarrow beyond.

“The hills behind are bleak but firm in flax, the grim rocks just over the road goodly guardians. A mile and a bit from Seatoun Village, and few neighbours. . .”

He would have woken there about 4 a.m., as he had done every day for years, and worked till breakfast, writing those rich and spirited letters to friends which one day — now that we have to think of such things — will make a fine book for anyone to read. July 18, 19.80 . . . Penguins are even ringing me up about my delayed 256 pp selected poems and verse — Allen, I don’t really care. They have trimmed to their page limits: and no new stuff will be included. Of which there is more than God’s plenty, and some of it must be passable. Later, later, if I can pack and unpack all my papers and al! these bloody books. I have gone through . life shedding printing presses, wives and books. Rien de plus, I hope . . . anchors aweigh:

“You know, it always seemed to me that Glover was made of some indestructible material.” So said John Lehmann to me, over a gin at the Cafe Royal, London, April, 1949. So it seemed to many of us. I do not know that Denis had any illusions.