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James K. Baxter Complete Prose Volume 2

An Impression of Speed

An Impression of Speed

Violence and a measure of obscurity are characteristics of Mr O’Sullivan’s verse. He thinks perhaps in shorthand. As Bacon said, aptly enough, the faults of youth spring from excess, the faults of age from defect – and excess is Mr O’Sullivan’s enviable weakness. However carefully worked, his poems give the impression of speed, even of intellectual impatience –

. . . The next, unwritten song is best.
The one that bursts at sight, first comprehension
Of realised hair, and curious sunlit breasts . . .

Yet even here the statement hinges on the ambiguous word ‘apprehension’, which can mean fear or knowledge or both. Some of the poems certainly are too raw, too blunt, too unconnected with particular happenings, to be successful. They tend to rely on a primitive contrast between imagined angels and ideal Venuses. I happen to have a personal sympathy and liking for such work, greatly preferring it to neatly constructed bird-cages that may or may page 9 not contain a bird. Yet the most satisfying poems in Mr O’Sullivan’s book are to be found among those related to the physical and historical landscape of Greece, where the poet may have learnt something from an earlier explorer, Lawrence Durrell –

Skopelos drops its village like a pack of cards
From clumsy-fisted mountains, the white sides over . . .

An old man, one of the theological generation . . .
Spoke of democracy like one who had lost a daughter.

Beside him, a smart quartet from Athens,
Macedonian farmers, proud of American watches,
Children with skins like fire upon the decks.
Sunlight being gracious to him he talked on, at ease . . .

Inevitably I murder the poem by quotation; but some such clear focus, energy and irony would be most welcome in poems that touched on our own country. Perhaps Mr O’Sullivan will write them.

1966 (377)