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Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 14, No. 11. September 6, 1951
"More Poems"
"More Poems"
The inevitable imprecision's of critical vocabulary force one into these comparisons, of their essence twice subjective, and always seeming invidious to some; Miss Duggan has been called by one reviewer both a Georgian and a Metaphysical. The second is the happier parallel though one must beware of expecting the powerful passions and the verbal complexities it immediately suggests, for Miss Duggan's affinities all lie with the gentle lucidities of Herbert. The temper of her mind, without ungraciousness to her sex, is masculine. One would not have the temerity, despite occasional prettiness's, to call this poet a poetess.
Like Herbert's her experiments in form are numerous and not uniformly successful; her language is, like his, chosen for its intellectual significance rather than for its conformity to a predetermined proper poetic diction—
(Lo How The Butterfly)
"So even I
when wings, lift from my clod
Breaking the sky
may Shimmer up to God."
"Though your spite may spit and hiss
You can know creative bliss"
"As rogue elephants have size
But are squint and scant of eyes
Magnitude not greatness brings
That which flouts the four last things"
which is, in its genre, perfect.
"Also whether with or without,
Use erudition
Shrug in tags in strange tongues
And leer by elipses."
The poems have a common thinness (like a good claret) which has nothing to do with lack of inspiration but is due to a refusal to luxuriate in any emotion, even poetic. One senses that the first impulse is always dry and lucid, that a precise integrity sets aside the temptation to force a passion or over embroider an image. It is this quality of fineness that is, perhaps, the greatest merit of Miss Duggan's work; it is certainly not the most immediately appealing primary virtue of a poet, but is one of the most durable.
(Allen Unwin, 1951, 7/6).
—P.H.