Poetry

The ways of poetry are many but sometimes, as it turns out, they are simply oppositional. These two new volumes of poetry from Angus & Robertson could easily have been produced as the occasion for some compare-and-contrast parlour game. The first, and continuing, thing to be said about them is that Gould is strong on artistic form whereas Owen is strong on life. The harder question to ask about any writer is whether it is better to be good at forms or to be full of life. Both, you will say, of course; but then we can’t have everything.

Anthologists face more than one dilemma of choice, beside that of personal preference. Is it better to show more of fewer poets, and give a true picture of their qualities and scope, to range widely across the landscape of the art, or reach a compromise between these methods? There are excellent anthologies in each genre.

The immediate virtues of this book are not difficult to see: Andrew Taylor is a skilled poet who understands the workings of syntax and rhythm, and who knows how to shape his poems into unified patterns with an apparent minimum of fuss. The poems tend to have a regular and easy pace; their fluency is considerable. Taylor writes with a genuine confidence and a literary awareness which is for the most part sophisticated and supple. His diction is uniform and he is careful not to overreach himself. There is no visible strain in the whole performance.

I have sat on these books longer than is reasonable for a review, yet have to confess that I am not satisfied with the readiness of what follows. I got the Porter first, but receiving the Johnston thought that they in some ways offered similar difficulties, perhaps similar rewards, to the reader, and that it might be neat to review them together.

All three poets use a personal voice to summon forth their immediate universe. Ryan and Brown are very much entrenched in their respective sub-cultures whilst Burke is essentially the polemicist, the observer of life in her native Newtown.

Ryan’s collection is permeated with the language of a very bold imagination: “As a brain leaks out from its tiny emotional field”; “Smile like a white ladder. That’s their famous trick”; “His straight and yellow skin steers his parents’ car”.

Tsaloumas is not a poet of the migrant experience. He does not evoke nostalgia for a homeland out of some experience of anguish as a stranger in a foreign culture. He defies such narrow limits. If some of his poetry refers to his homeland it is within the broader framework of nostalgia, of a feeling of loss or rejection, of Mneme.

His poetry in this collection encompasses a multiplicity of subject matter and style. He looks at the past through what remains of it in time present, yet time present in its own right cannot retrieve the past (‘Morning Start’). He avoids prophesying about the future, which he says is the domain of the representatives of the people with their brassy voices – politicians. He precludes the possibility of a vision of the future being created conclusively by looking through the “lookouts” of today or the past. He might well say, leave that to the enigmatic oracles and the exhortations of the politicians – to Messianism.