Poets Polemics.

"New Poems," selected by Ian Milner and Denis Glover. The Caxton Club Press. Canterbury College, 1934.

It is a greatly heartening thing to know that in New Zealand there are poets whose verse sensitively reflects both the changing scenes in the theatre of our time and the formal currents in the stream of modern poetry. This small volume of verse that the Caxton Club has published is the first attempt to group those New Zealand writers who are uncompromisingly modern in outlook. The book is at once a challenge and a valuable creative venture represented in the anthology are, by The poets represented in the anthology are by name. Jean Alison, Lawrence Baigent. Charles Brasch, Eric Cook, Allen Curnow, A. R. D. Fairburn, Denis Glover, R. A. K. Mason, Ian Milner, and Carl Straubel. Only two or three of them have made their name and been granted grudging recognition by the Pooh-Bahs of culture. Yet anyone who is concerned about the prospects of a creative up-surge in this country must look to them. With but a couple of omissions, possibly on grounds of age, the writers of "New Poems" are the most serious poets now writing in New Zealand.

For these are poets who have shaken free from the paralysing grip of official, bookish "Saturday-supplement" culture. They have broken with the politic literary-column-gossip chit-chat of our minature "cultural" circles: and with the traditional forms, in whose refurbishing the literary folk expend their time and talent. But this is not the break with tradition for blind revolt's sake. Rather it is the realisation that these forms, and the states of mind they express, may continue to exist in the semblance of literature after all life and interest has long ago fled them. As Milner and Glover say in their excellent foreword:

"A predilection for decorative lyricising and emotional embroidery, weakly reminiscent of pre-war Georgian verse, has produced in this country a lifeless growth which, though not necessarily insincere, is in no sense creative."

"The poet," they go on to say, "is the focal-point of awareness in his time, and since we are living in a revolutionary age, some interpretation of its influence is only to be expected. Several of these writers respond more definitely to social stimuli than others. Yet we do not feel they are poetically significant because of their any common interest in social material for itself. what compels our attention is the liberating effect of such material on their verse." That is the key to understanding the poets of this volume. Poets are of the prescient beings; one measures the major issues for their own and immediately successive generations in terms of their sensitive responses. And, emotionally rooted not in fantasy but in life, all these poets agree in seeing the social problem as the pivotal problem, the social locality as the ultimate reality. From their sensitiveness to veering social issues, their implied faith in a more creative way of living derives the renowned poetic vigour and pliancy of these poets.

To select only two examples, from the verse of R. A. K. Mason, who extracts the utmost dramatic power from the rhyme, emphasis and regularity of the classical forms, and from the quick and flexible free verse of Ian Milner. In the last stanza of "Youth at the Dance" Mason describes the revolutionary legions of the rising, oppressed multitudes:

"Their faces are more scarred Than a miner's boot and rough As a quarry-face and as hard As a hammer-head, and good tarred Canvas is not more tough."

And from Milner's impassioned "To the Living":

"Stand together now

And let our anger—measure of our love—

Explode like shrapnel through the stagnant air,

Nerve our fibres

In the acrid savour of renewal,

And hearts recharged with passion,

Let our eyes drink

Here with all men

The clear and equal sunlight of the world."

A.K.