MR. CRESSWELL'S POEMS

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 84, 9 April 1932, Page 17

MR. CRESSWELL'S POEMS

Bcviowing a new book of poems by Mr. Cresswell, the "Manchester Guardian" has the following:— With "The Poet's Progress" still fresh in the memory, that curious book of naive egotism and disarming candour, written in a prose of Elizabethan flavour, and denouncing all English poetry since Byron, Mr. Cresswell publishes "Poems 1924-1931." Though it opens with an address to England— Mr. Cresswell is, of course, a New Zealander—in which he reproaches her with Having now only the weak sun of remembered song, ..-. . , Only cities that aro shrouds, only poets that are tombs, he presents his poems in a spirit that is positively chastened compared with tho sky-scraping assurance with which he first presented himself as poet to a famous English publisher, who naturally declined to take him at that valuation—the New World's sole great one since Whitman.

There ■ has been a severe ■winnowing of "Poems 1921-27," his first book; and the resultant,- with the poems added since, though in no way great, gives evidence of at least the seeds of distinction. First of the- best things is "Ode (on the Triumph of Love through the Kesurrection of Life)." This is a fantasy on New Zealand soldiers fallen in the war. It is imaginatively conceived and wrought, well rhythmed, rhymed, cadonced, balanced, and pulses with tho excitation that is essentially poetici Nest to that come one .or two' of the sonnets — "To Autumn,?' "The Poet to hisßooks, II.," and "Time- Lags Abed"—pregnant unities, in the- antiques manner, with its "haths" arid "thees"'and "thines," its inversions and nogatival "nors," yet neither a fake nor a pose, but the frankly individual expression of this poet. Only, lot him make no mistake. English poetry will still exist in uu(liminished vigour, whatever traveller from New Zealand may take his stand to sketch tho ruins of Westr.inster Abbey.