RECENT BOOKS

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 138, 8 December 1945, Page 9

RECENT BOOKS

CHANGING SCOPE

POETRY, NEW AND OLD

(By Q.)

Like other branches of literature, and also the other arts of music and painting, poetry has undergone changes in technique and scope, amounting to a transformation. The Scope has widened to include topics-:-and their treatment in verse—which used to be reserved for prose. In a recent review in this column of a book of Australian short stories ("Coast to Coast") the selector was quoted as admitting a similar expansion of the scope of the short story, and the difficulty of criticism, especially to critics accustomed to the old limitations and definitions. The gates are open to expansion on a big scale. The question is: Will quality be sacrificed to quantity? SOME POEMS FOR NEW ZEALAND. By Merrill Moore. (The Progressive Publishing Society, Wellington.) _ , . POETRY. The Australian Quarterly of Verse, No. 16. Edited by Flexmore Hudson. (Economy Press, Adelaide.) THE STATION BALLADS and Other Verses of David McKee Wright. Selected and arranged by Robert Solway. (John A. Lee, Auckland.) The first of the three volumes, which might be taken to represent the new and the old in verse written of New Zealand and Australia, is by a member of the American services who spent two years in New Zealand (1942----1944), liked the country and the people, and nays them this tribute in verse. The second, a slim booklet, is an exemplar of the wide expansion of poetry, already noted, and the fertility of the Australian poet, whose name, is now almost legion. This is No. 16 of the Quarterly, and it keeps up production to standard. The third volume revives the memory of the ]ate David McKee Wngh., who came from Ulster to New Zealand in 1887 at the age of 18, and did much literary work in the next 20 .years, establishing a reputation which stood him in good stead when he sought a wider field in Australia m 1910. He died hi 1928. ANYTHING AT ALL. Merrill Moore's poems are all short, one to each page, and seldom more than 20 lines long, but the range is extraordinary- Some are addressed to Aucklanders, some to Wellingtonians. some to "denizens of the South Island,^ and others to Maoris and "Rotoruans. Here are a few of the titles, to show the range: "The Face of a Tram Conductor"; "The Woman Who Waited on You in the Shop".; '/Beer is a Badge of Courage (Till Six o'clock) ; "Women's Eyes in Tea-rooms (or anywhere)"; "I Think a Good Hot Bath is Wonderful"; "You Have Changed a Lot in the Last Twenty Years"; "Don t Make it, Beds"; "Cards and the Pack ; "The Noise that Time Makes." Here is a poem exhibiting the style and entitled "Waitemata Harbour': A thousand poets with a thousand pens Could never tell t'.ie glitter water gives In moonlight, under the prismatic lens Of moon above the clattering of tho waves. The fonm and crest are tied in mobile sheaves 'flint wind takes only a second to cut down After each is ripe and ready grown. They fall upon the sand, the dripping sand That sea-wind lifts in granules by tho hand To blow in dunes far Inland, bury trees. And there deface the tired monstrosities Of human fence and house across the way. That rise upou the flats along the bay. And sink far inland on tho flaming west Horizon at the doorway of the blest. From "Poetry" one may cite a descriptive passage from "Circular Quay" (Sydney), by Gina Ballantyne: Clank of turnstiles—once the magic gates to a child's wonder-city, towers and spires and all the tinsel raiment of early dr<uun. Tho vision fades upon the dusty quay that iron rails divide from glint of waters, the wide and sunlit quay, where stout brown walls might house Macquarie's ghost grown mild with years. OLD WELLINGTON. And here is David McKee Wright, with his "Wellington," included in Ins "New Zealand Chimes," published in 1901, while he was a minister in a Newtown church ("Wellington." it is said, "appears on the door of a tram" here): Uugged she stands, no garlands of bright flowers Bind her swart brows, no pleasant lorest shades Mantle- with twining branches her high hills. No leaping brooks fall singing to her sea. Hers aro no meadows green, nor ordered parks: Not hers the gladness nor the light of SOllg, Nor cures fine for any singing. Kudely scarred Hit guardian hills encircle her pent sheets. Loud with Hie voices and tho steps of trade; And in her bay the ships of east and west Meet and cast anchor. Hers the prlflo of place In Khop and mart, no languid beauty she \ Spreading her soft limbs amid dreaming flowers, But roach and strenuous, red with rudest health. Tossing her blown hair from her eager eyes That look afar, filled with the gleam of power, j She stands the strong Queen city of the south. The quotations are for comparison not of quality but of technique and approach in dealing with kindred subjects. But it is only fair to say that the older poet and his school of the turn of the century, including Thomas Bracken, Henry Lawson, "Banjo Patterson, and many others, to mention a contemporary, James Elliott, of Hamilton, who belongs to the school, excelled much more in popular narrative poems, tales in verse, often with pathos and humour, than in descriptive poems. On the other hand, the moderns stick, at least here and m Australia, to shorter pieces with a satiric or sardonic vein of pessimism. Apparently they can write verse on anything, and they do. You like or you lump it—that's about all one can say about it just now. What the next generation will think about it all, who can say? TALE OF IMAGINATION. FORBIDDEN GOLD. By Will Lawson. (Oswald-Scaly, New Zealand, Ltd., Auckland.) Will Lawson, not to be confounded with Henry Lawson, is one of the veterans of the writer's craft in New Zealand and Australia, and, in addition of a multitude of short stories and sketches, is the author of a classic, "Steam in the Pacific," which deserves republication. Mr. Lawson is a New Zealander, but has long been domiciled in Australia. "Forbidden Gold' is a story of New Zealand and belongs to the vast category of "tales of the imagination," where the author draws deeply on his imagination to embroider a theme based on reality. The reality in this case is the gold-mining l venture at Terawhiti in the early days, I the relics of which are still visible to I the tram per in his rumblings over the I bleak peninsula. In his foreword, I "There's Gold in the Mountain," Mr. ' Lawson says: The scene of this story is Terawhiti Station. ... It is written round actual historical happenings, including the gold-mining ventures in those hills. ... Of this venture very little can be traced in records, but the tunnel remains and the rusted ruins of an engine and boiler and small stamp mill be on the hillside. _„. Using the storyteller's licence, Mr. Lawson has worked this meagre material into an exciting romance, introducing the Maori and his tapu. The rest can be imagined, as the author imagined it. It is a moot point whether in narratives of this type dialogue should be used so lavishly as here unless it adds to the evolution of the drama. Apart from this the story is interesting, if not a masterpiece of fiction.