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James K. Baxter Complete Prose Volume 1

The Kiwi and Mr Curnow

The Kiwi and Mr Curnow

It is natural that a review of the new Penguin anthology of New Zealand verse, edited by Allen Curnow, should take the form of a comparison with its immediate predecessor, An Anthology of New Zealand Verse, edited by Robert Chapman and Jonathan Bennett. In its most public form (more people read anthologies than will read separate volumes, and overseas readers will probably make their sole contact with New Zealand poetry through our anthologies) New Zealand poetry bears a resemblance to a three-legged stool – one taken from the cow byre perhaps, for the occasion. The Chapman anthology and the two Curnow anthologies are its legs. One can set aside A Treasury of New Zealand Verse, edited by Alexander and Currie, and Kowhai Gold, edited by Quentin Pope, for these selections are out of print and contain perhaps four good poems between them. On closer inspection one finds that the stool is actually two-legged. Mr Curnow’s A Book of New Zealand Verse, in its two editions, and the new Penguin book are, in fact, one book modified for differing occasions. Mr Curnow has himself pointed this by refurbishing for the new book what is in fact the Introduction for the old ones. In thesepage 439 somewhat unusual circumstances it is not unfair to make the suggested comparison.

The editor of an anthology needs special qualities of training, intellect, and imagination. He should be thoroughly familiar with all possible sources. He should be able to distinguish a good poem from a bad one, and (a rare enough ability) the first-rate from the second-rate. He should be catholic in his sympathies, able to appreciate poetry of a kind which he, if he is a poet – and both Mr Curnow and Mr Chapman are themselves poets – might never dream of imitating. He should not be influenced by special piety towards old friends or (it goes without saying) special animus towards those who are not his friends. A further quality is indispensable for a New Zealand anthologist: he should provide a relatively just selection of all good poetry in the field. In England it might not be unfair for an anthologist of modern verse to omit, for one reason or another, examples of the work of Robert Graves. There would be other anthologists to pick up the fallen plums. In New Zealand, on account of the meagre avenues which exist for a poet’s work to reach a new public, it would be grossly unfair for an anthologist to make any major omissions.

In training and scholarship Mr Curnow and Mr Chapman need not be compared to either’s discredit, though I think it would be commonly acknowledged that Mr Curnow is the better poet. They have both scoured the archives for material. Mr Chapman rarely includes a poem of dubious merit. In the uncertain cases of Jessie Mackay and Hubert Church (the one, what Mr Curnow aptly calls a ‘ghost-poet’, and the other a didactic rhetorician) he might plead that the standard had to be lowered to admit any verse before the Twenties of this century; as Mr Curnow might also plead for his inclusion of the singularly empty verses of C.C. Bowen and Arthur H. Adams. But the scales tilt strongly against Mr Curnow’s selection when one sees that he has included four slight pieces by Arnold Wall (a competent versifier but scarcely a poet) and a turgid eight-page poem by B.E. Baughan in place of, let us say, a ballad by David McKee Wright. It is plain that Mr Curnow’s piety has misled him. He is considering Professor Wall, the man, rather than Arnold Wall, the versifier. And the inclusion of the ghost epic by B.E. Baughan may have happened on account of Mr Curnow’s intense preoccupation with landscape poetry, time, and the cult of isolation. The poem is about an isolated bush child brooding on time to be.

With poetry from the nineteen-twenties onwards both Mr Curnow and Mr Chapman are on firmer ground. They have a large amount of good verse to select from; and neither anthologist has included any real dross. As a result both books are of a high quality, and compare most favourably with Judith Wright’s recent disastrous selection of Australian poetry. There is still room, however, for the bias that comes from piety. It is possible that Mr Chapman included too many poems by James K. Baxter, because he wished to highlight the new development of New Zealand poetry in the Forties and Fifties, whichpage 440 the work of this poet in some measure typified. It is certain that Mr Curnow has again been misled by piety when he includes almost all the best of R.A.K. Mason’s published verse (18 poems in all) and 25 poems by Denis Glover (I am here considering sections of a poem as separate poems, as they are in effect for an anthologist’s purpose.)

The bias would be less disturbing if new poets of the Forties and the Fifties were adequately represented. But Anton Vogt, Colin Newbury, Charles Doyle, Peter Bland, and Gordon Challis, all poets who have on occasion produced first-rate work, are not represented at all. M.K. Joseph is represented by three poems; Louis Johnson by three; Hubert Witheford by three; Paul Henderson by three; Alistair Campbell by two; Pat Wilson by two; W.H. Oliver by one. Two thin poems by David Elworthy and C.K. Stead’s lively London pastiche do not counterbalance the omissions. If Mr Curnow was looking for new substantial work, the poems of Barry Mitcalfe might well have served his turn. Mitcalfe is a maturer writer than Stead or Elworthy. The most disturbing feature of all is the total exclusion of verse by Mary Stanley. This poet is wittier than Ursula Bethell, more original and profound than Robin Hyde, though the body of her published work is small. It would not have been necessary for her to elbow out Gloria Rawlinson or Ruth Dallas, from each of whose writings Mr Curnow has made a wise selection, or some poorly represented other poet. It would have been sufficient for Mr Curnow to have whittled down some of the works included through piety in the earlier pages of the anthology.

There is no comparable bias in Mr Chapman’s anthology. He did a most valuable pioneering work in his magnificent, robust selection from Kendrick Smithyman’s poems. Though Mr Curnow also highlights Smithyman, he attempts to represent him as a nature poet preoccupied with historical themes, instead of the robust metaphysical love poet which he is. There is no comparable pioneering work in the Penguin book. One was crying out to be done by a bold anthologist. A full strong selection from the work of Louis Johnson (a poet as vigorous, varied, and uneven as Smithyman) would have astonished and delighted many readers, broken the monotonous sequences of nature poetry with which Mr Curnow regales us, and made literary history in this country. But Mr Johnson is not Mr Curnow’s cup of tea. The chance has been let slip through prejudice or timidity.

The delicate and difficult question of modesty in an anthologist must here be considered. With an exceptionally lengthy Introduction, some plodding translations from the Maori, notes on contributors, and his own well selected poems, Mr Curnow has written considerably more than a third of the actual words in the new Penguin book. As an editor he cannot be denied the right to do this, if he so pleases; but the impression is unfortunate. Mr Chapman made no such error in taste. His notes are few and his Introduction brief, though pithy. One has the impression that Mr Curnow genuinely desiredpage 441 to explain his poets to an overseas public. Again the motive is a kind of misplaced piety – a wish to prepare the way for his awkward country cousins. The apologetic note is sounded again and again in his Introduction. There is no doubt that this Introduction constitutes a welcome addition to our meagre stock of literary criticism. It could perhaps have been published separately as a small book or large pamphlet, leaving some brief introductory note. I am certain that our poets would prefer to be represented overseas by their own work rather than by Mr Curnow’s lengthy explanation of it. I can say this with an easy mind, since I am one contributor who is reasonably satisfied with Mr Curnow’s selection from his work.

The central difference between the two anthologies is one of catholicity. There have been two revolutions in New Zealand poetry in the course of this century. The first was the movement of the Thirties, in which a Georgian style of writing was modified or rejected, while social changes within New Zealand opened the eyes of our poets to the unexplored history and physical environment of their country. The seeding influence of new writing being done overseas, especially in England, aided this revolution. In a sense this group developed a private mythology in which mountains symbolised many things and some ancestral voyage had been made and New Zealanders were very lonely people on the outskirts of the circus tent of the human family. The poems were good, especially the unselfconscious ballads of Denis Glover (Mason, though he wrote well, has been overrated; his range is very narrow indeed), but the mythology was private and often highly dubious. Unfortunately Mr Curnow takes it very seriously indeed. It is his Procrustes bed on which all New Zealand verse must be stripped and measured. In this he is not alone, since Charles Brasch, another member of the Thirties group, has exercised for many years, as editor of Landfall, our sole permanent and well known literary periodical, a similar restrictive influence. Though recent issues of Landfall indicate Mr Brasch’s genuine effort to broaden his editorial tastes, he has an ingrained predisposition to prefer poetry that chimes in with the mythology of the Thirties. I do not set aside the achievement of both men as writers; it is as editors that I suggest their influence has been restrictive and often pernicious.

The second revolution has been less obvious but no less complete. In the late Forties and the Fifties a number of poets seceded from the self-conscious New Zealandism of their immediate predecessors and began to write simply as people who happened to live in a given time and place. Their experiences frequently overlap with those of their predecessors but the sense of urgency about having been born a New Zealander seems to have gone for good.

Mr Curnow has recognised the first revolution (he was after all in the thick of it) but remained wholly blind to the second one. In his Introduction he postulates a specific New Zealand experience, an urgent sense of isolation founded on the sense of being ‘colonial’. The truth is that most New Zealanderspage 442 only feel this when they are paying a visit to London. It is only there that they are regarded as colonials, an exotic and slightly illegitimate breed; and they may or may not choose to accept the English view of themselves. It is unfortunate that Mr Curnow has done so, not only for himself but for his fellow poets, when he might have ignored it or laughed or blasted it away. Mr Chapman postulates no such thing. He approaches our literature as a critic with a strong sociological bent, taking the country and the poets as he finds them. And his eyes are fully open to the second revolution, in which, significantly enough, American influences have played an important part.

The Chapman anthology is a better book than the new Penguin one. But the Penguin one is cheaper, and this will probably facilitate its sales. A teacher in our secondary schools might do well to have both on his shelves.

Mr Oliver’s broad lucid account of the development of New Zealand poetry, with its full quotations from poets of both revolutions, should provide a salutary antidote to Mr Curnow’s New Zealandism. He rightly stresses the social content and the element of satire which has become pronounced in the writing of the Fifties. His bulletin is necessarily limited by its intended audience of secondary school pupils; but it is balanced enough to be of value to adult readers as well. One remembers Mr Oliver’s brief interim editorship of Landfall, in which he showed an essential catholicity of sympathies, and one cannot help considering what he might have done as editor of the Penguin book. Having no axe to grind, he is a good critic, generous, and exact, and the map he provides is a sound one.

1961 (233)