SHORTER REVIEWS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24911, 9 May 1942, Page 3

SHORTER REVIEWS

Art in New Zealand. Edited by' C. A. Marris. (Harry H. Tombs.) 3s 'fid. Passing Into Aquarius. By "Leo.” (Dakers.) 7s. Poetry. Edited by Flexmore Hudson. (Economy Press, Adelaide.) Is fid. Within its 50 pages the March number of the quarterly. Art In New Zealand, has contents which its readers will find varied and instructive. As to the illustrations, the frontispiece in colour is a study, of an old pohutukawa tree at Coromandel by K. Airirii Vane v The recent exhibition of British and New Zealand war pictures has been drawn upon for some good examples of the work of Sir Muirhead Bone, John Nash, R. V. Pitchforth, Captain Peter Mclntyre, Eric Kennington, and Austen Deans. Excellent reproductions of Gericault’s “ Raft of the Medusa ” and Goldie-Steele’s "Arrival of the Maoris in New Zealand” provide Dr Gerdt Eichbaum with matter for aclose and interesting comparison of the treatment of the subjects by the artists concerned. “Sunday Painters” is the title of an aricle by A. D. Carbery, which strikes off the common track and Is the more to be appreciated for its light touch and historic flavour. Other contributors to the literary contents are H, V. Miller, with “Art Begins at Two” (illustrated), and Patricia Saunders with verse: There are accounts of official war artists and their work, and of the doings of New Zealand artists abroad, reviews, apd art notes from the different* Dominion centres. „ > ,

In the language of the astrologer, the age of Aquarius is the millennium, which the author of this tract considers to be at hand. “ Leo ” declares in his early pages that his book is written “only for those who are waiting for some such statement of the truths they sense through their intuition or faith.” There are many, Unprepared intellectually or emotionally for the brave but unlikely world he depicts, who will readily accede to bis‘suggestion “not to persist with the attempt to read it, but to put it down never to take it up again.” There may be here, grist for our philosophic mill, but the grain and chaff are barely separable, and grandiose statements leave the pedestrian reader flat-footed and'agape. Of a surety, if God should come again to earth, regenerate man might build a world without flaw or imperfection. But “Leo’s” discourse loses is effectiveness in grandiloquence and superb indifference to reality.

The second issue of Poetry, a quarterly of Australian and New verse, edited by Flexmore Hudson, contains poems that have appeared elsewhere, and are reproduced with the sanction of the authors. They Include “ The Dreaming World,” from a sonnet sequence by Douglas Stewart, and Sonnet VIII from his “Sonnets to the Unknown Soldier.” “ Parachute Fatality” has been selected from “ Selected Poems.” recently put out by the Caxton Press, Christchurch, “Snow” from “Just Christmas" by C.' R. Allen. Other contributors are Molly Swan. Nancy Wakefield, Gina Ballantyne, Leonard Mann, Evan Williams. A. G. Austin, Nancy Wakefield, and the editor. As befits the time, the note of. this number is sadness. There is little or nothing that might be termed martial. This second number is better than the first for one reason at least—it does not contain any one poem of disproportionate length to its fellows.