More Poems

It is unfortunate that in the clash of schools and generations one may overlook the significance of some work which overtops schools and speaks plainly across barriers of time and situation. Eileen Duggan has been writing for many years; but I must confess that only recently did I realise the excellence of much of her poetry. Her sensibility has sharpened with time; and her technique has developed beyond the limitations of the Georgian manner on which it is founded. This new volume contains some of her maturest and most finished poems. There are still, however, three levels in her poetry which rarely combine to make a completely satisfactory unity – the first whimsical, the second sensuous, the third religious and metaphysical.

At her best Miss Duggan is a fine metaphysical poet (as in her poem ‘Prophecy’), her ideas clarified by the fire of a passionate intellect. Where the impulse is less immediate, her ideas are given shape by whimsy, a play of private feeling comparable with that most characteristic in the poetry of Emily Dickinson. In poems such as ‘Lo, How the Butterfly’, the metaphors do not develop immediately from the central theme; rather they are ornament and byplay, rendering the poem more pious than religious. The final element, that of sensuous imagination, though it has no doubt given Miss Duggan the intensity which raises all her poetry above the commonplace, seems also the most wayward factor, one difficult to amalgamate with the main body ofpage 78 her thought. Her images drawn from nature do frequently, especially in her earlier work, tug against the central argument of a poem. But when all this has been said, one must recognise the entirely felicitous comparison:

As rogue-elephants have size,
But are squint and scant of eyes,
Magnitude not greatness brings
That which flouts the four last things.

Or the entire poem ‘Contrast’, a comparison of the reasoning and intuitive approaches to religious truth, expressed through a concrete comparison of the arrival of Magi and shepherds at the Nativity – a remarkable poem, blending the diverse elements of thought, whimsy and sensuous feeling, and fully actualised. Like Ursula Bethell (the parallel is closer and more apt than many will care to admit) Eileen Duggan can bring all her powers to bear on a religious theme. This volume is evidence of her advance in poetry from pious and aesthetic ideas to a genuine theocentric humanism.

1951 (48)