Comments on: te whiori o te kuri: james k. baxter redux

By: Tim Upperton

Tim Upperton — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 01:43:34 +0000

Actually a dozen of Baxter’s poems have been set to music, in a compilation produced by the New Zealand musician Charlotte Yates. Yates has produced a similar compilation of the recently deceased Hone Tuwhare’s poems.

By: graywyvern

graywyvern — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 19:59:42 +0000

i think his ballads are best–authentic sounding but truly weird–someone should set them to music!
m.

By: Cathy

Cathy — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 02:30:13 +0000

My favourite is:
The Ikons
Hard, heavy, slow, dark
Or so I find them, the hands of Te Whaea
Teaching me to die. Some lightness will come later
When the heart has lost its unjust hope
For special treatment. Today I go with a bucket
Over the paddocks of young grass
So delicate like the fronds of maidenhair,
Looking for mushrooms. I find twelve of them,
Most of them little, and some eaten by maggots,
But they’ll do to add to the soup. It’s a long time now
Since the great ikons fell down,
God, Mary, home, sex, poetry,
Whatever one uses as a bridge
To cross the river that only has one beach,
And even one’s name is a way of saying –
‘This gap inside a coat’ – the darkness I call God,
The darkness I call Te Whaea, how can they translate
The blue calm evening sky that a plane tunnels through
Like a wasp, or the bucket in my hand,
Into something else? I go on looking
For mushrooms in the field, and the fist of longing
Punches my heart, until it is too dark to see.
James K. Baxter, 1971

By: emily dickinson

emily dickinson — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 04:50:58 +0000

Apparently Galway Kinnell is a big Baxter fan. Also, the NZ poets in the next generation are pretty amazing, Wedde and Brunton and co – but none of them get exported, not to my knowledge anyway.

By: Tim Upperton

Tim Upperton — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 02:31:33 +0000

There’s a lot to admire about Baxter’s late work, but one notices, too, a poet who has come to believe in the myth that has grown around him. The robust, biting social satire of his earlier work all but disappears. An example of such satire (from about 1960, I think) is quoted in full below. I am, by the way, a New Zealander, and I would agree that Baxter’s influence here was enormous – far greater than that of his contemporary, Allen Curnow, whose influence was confined to literary culture.
- Tim Upperton
Ballad of Calvary Street
On Calvary Street are trellises
Where bright as blood the rose bloom,
And gnomes like pagan fetishes
Hang their hats on an empty tomb;
Where two old souls go slowly mad,
National Mum and Labour Dad.
Each Saturday when full of smiles
The children come to pay their due,
Mum takes down the family files
And cover to cover she thumbs them through,
Poor Len before he went away
And Mabel on her wedding day.
The meal-brown scones display her knack,
Her polished oven spits with rage,
While in Grunt Grotto at the back
Dad sits and reads the Sporting Page,
Then ambles out in boots of lead
To weed around the parsnip bed.
A giant parsnip sparks his eye,
Majestic as the Tree of Life;
He washes it and rubs it dry
And takes it in to his old wife -
‘Look, Laura, would that be a fit?
The bastard has a flange on it!’
When both were young, she would have laughed
A goddess in her tartan skirt,
But wisdom, age and mothercraft
Have rubbed it home that men like dirt:
Five children and a fallen womb,
A golden crown beyond the tomb.
Nearer the bone, sin is sin,
And women bear the cross of woe,
And that affair with Mrs Flynn
(It happened thirty years ago)
Though never mentioned, means that he
Will get no sugar in his tea.
The afternoon goes by, goes by,
The angels harp above a cloud;
A son-in-law with spotted tie
And daughter Alice fat and loud
Discuss the virtues of insurance
And stuff their tripes with trained endurance.
Flood-waters hurl upoin the dyke
And Dad himself can go to town,
For little Charlie on his trike
Has ploughed another iris down.
His parents rise to chain the beast,
Brush off the last crumbs of their lovefeast.
And so these two old fools are left,
A rosy pair in the evening light,
To question Heaven’s dubious gift,
To hag and grumble, growl and fight:
The love they kill won’t let them rest,
Two birds that peck in one fouled nest.
Why hammer nails? Why give no change?
Habit, habit clogs them dumb.
The Sacred Heart above the range
Will bleed and burn till Kingdom Come,
But Yin and Yang won’t ever meet
In Calvary Street, in Calvary Street.

By: daisy

daisy — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 12:50:22 +0000

Steve–
Thanks for this; I know only Baxter’s “Wild Bees” poem (is that even the title?) from the Norton Anthology, but have always thought it a stunner. I hope someone heeds this call…
Daisy