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James K. Baxter Complete Prose Volume 1

Saved from the Thames

Saved from the Thames

Not all these poems are deeply significant, not all of them are well made, but each undoubtedly carries the imprint, like a thumb-mark on clay, of one man’s knowledge of life. If one were looking for a parallel in New Zealand writing, the nearest would be the deeply melancholy idiosyncratic work of the early Mason. But comparisons are odious; and Mr Ireland has his own tune to play –

This evening the smell of sea is drifting over the night-tide sand:
and the thin breezes are beds of lifted hair,
wound tight, like the moist strands
of tobacco which the old men roll
like bullets in their hands . . .

I don’t know another New Zealand poet who would be content to indicate the opposites of youth and age, love and violence, so quietly, so delicately, and sum the whole thing up in an image so familiar and yet so gripping.

The Introduction by Barry Crump had (one would have thought) only a chance in fifty of succeeding. Introductions by friends are even more odious than comparisons. But this once the chance has paid off. Barry Crump’s brief remarks do in fact help along the poet’s dialogue with his readers. Crump tells us that when Kevin Ireland was preparing this book of verse, he made paper boats out of the rejects and floated them down the Thames, one of Crump’s favourites being among them. If true, the story is magnificent. It is the kind of thing one wants to know.

One regrets the other verses at the bottom of the Thames; but very likely Mr Ireland will remember what was good in them. When he writes with images taken directly from nature, the poems have a great freshness and solidity, and a fluid rhythm. There are several fine love poems in this smallpage 617 selection. I hope they are not just a flash in the pan; but even if they are, the book is well worth having.

1963 (296)