four books five poets

8/10/2019 Four Books Five Poets

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Four

Books,

Five

Poets

Pam

Brown

S.

K. Kelen:

Trans-Sumatran

Highway

and

other

poems

(polonius

press,

$rZ.g

S).

Ouyang

Yu: Songs

of

the

Last

Chinese Poet

(Wild

Peony,

$rs).

John Kinsella:

The

Hunt(Fremantle

Arts

Centre Press,

$r6.gs).

Miriel Lenore:

travelling

alone

together&

louise

Cnsp:

Ruby

Camp

(Spinifex

Press,

$rg.gS).

ouR vEARS

AGo,

as a

memo

to my

lT-obsessed

Iibrary

co-workers,

I

pinned

S. K.

Kelen's

poem

'The

Information

Superhighway'to

the

office

wall.

Maybe, one

day,

we

would

all

work from on-line

homes

-

and

heed

the

poem's

warning:

My

house is

a city

state.

Outdoors

there's

a weird

fog

I

don'twantto go

outin.

F

ore sts are

flattene

d

to

fuel

computerfadories,

the

trees

are routed

once &for

all.

Whenthe lasttiger

inthe

wild

died

the tigers

in

the zoo

just vanished.

There's

a drawing

of a tiger

on the cover

of Trans-

Sumatran

Highway

-

a

reminder

of its

probable

im-

minent

extinction.

Various

other

animals,

reptiles

and

birds traverse

backyards, paddocks

and

jungles

in

this book.

Steve Kelen

is

an enthusiastic

traveller

and ap-

plies

wry

analytic

acumen to

travel-experiences

as

in

the

final stanzaof.

'The

Ramayana':

Blood rivers

run

into

the

sea.

Turtle

soup dreams

of

revenge.

Dragons champ

attheir leashes,

cr az

e d buffalo

e s

stamp e de

But everyone

isforgiven.

Volcanoes

chuckle.

Frogs

roar

louder

and

louder

kick

starting a

generator.

Et

e

rnitlt's

g

r

e e n

t e

r

r ac e s :

g

e

ck

o e s' I au

ght

e

r.

A

goldenfrog

sitting

on a doorframe

means

storms

of

fortune.

I order

another

drink atthe

lungle Inn

to

celebrate

Freedom

Day

and

the

good

luck godsfly

to Timor

Timur.

These poems

generously

open

up

numinous

and

galactic

worlds,

enrich

suburban

domestici

( They

began

as each

other's

armchair/in

endless

embrace/evolving

to

a

sofa & a

desk,

afar/

but

in

same

room ), revise poetic

history

('shelley

Heaven'),

fire

political

concern

(Koori

ghosts

at

Coorong, nuclear

fission

at

Hiroshima,

Russian

struction of

Chechnya),

all with

pungent

humor

insight.

S.

K.

Kelen

ranges

through these

expans

realms

and sometimes

enters

the

more

quietly

p

found

as

in

the clear

pathos

of

'Goodbyel

which

fa

wells

a

friend

who

has died:

Everyone's

responsible

for

everything

now there

are

onlyfeathers

left

so

kiss

the lightning,

atickettothe

stars.

The

sunbeams

have

arrived

Expatriate

Chinese

poet

Ouyang

Yu's discurs

monologues

from

a

sick

manfrom asia ,disgruntl

disappointed

and deracinated

by

the

'west',

a

chronicle of despair.

Ouyang

Yu has high

expe

tions

of himself

and of

poetry

in

a

country

that

pla

scant

value on

poetry.lt's

the

wrong place

-

mak

the

subject

doubly

displaced.

He

identifies

so

backward

aspects

of

materiallst

Australian

cult

- probably

I

should

start

playing

tattslotto/or

buy

raffle

tickets/like

the

stupid

australians

or

australi

chinese and

the

way bqllying

is an

unchalleng

norm

-

that

australianboys

or

girls

sang

ching

ch

chinaman/and

say

fuck

or idiots or nick

off or sh

get

lost/and

never

get punished/that

chinese boys

thathere

too.

As

is

usual

in

confessional

poetry

this

multip

narrator

speaks

as

a

victim

involved in

a

process

le

ing

to

cathartic

self-destruction,

rebellion

or ang

For

Ouyang

Yu

there's

a therapeutic

efficacy in th

monologues. A rant

against literary

editors is

shr

.

. .

p

oetry / r

ej e de d thr ough/the

ar s ehole

s of

lit.

ma

(i

me

an

litte r

e d mag

g

ots)

in the n

ext c e ntury o r s

o

/l

kill all

the

editors/and

publishfiom

headtop/now y

want minimalism/

you

dickhead/that's

what you

minim

ali z e

y

our s e

lf

into.

It's

an embittered view

seeing

mostly anomie.

E

spring,

usually

a

cliched symbol

of

renewal,

rs

depre

ing- spring

is

now

deepinits

owndespair/shapedlike


2/3

of

history

and general

dislocation

that

Aussie

dolts

endure

-

it being

only zro years

since

setilement.

There's

a

filmic

element

to

John

Kinsella's

Ifte

Hunt,

suggesting

golden-filtered

depictions

of vast

landscape

-'Days

of Heaven',

maybe,

or'Witness'.

But

it's

Western

Australia

and

it's

a

period

film

-

the

time

seems

like

an

age

ago.

Perhaps

it's

because

in

my

ur-

banity

I

link

pastoralists

with

ABC-TV's'Landline' or

native

title

discourse

and

know

litile

of

the actual

Iives

of

wheat

farmers

that

these poems

seem

so

powerful.

The

language

of

this book

is necessarily

straight-

forward

(unlike

Kinsella's po-mo

mode)

in

order

to

transport

the

dark

content.

As

George

Steiner

says,

these

poems

are

narratives

of feeling

comprised

of

many

stories.

They

are

also

often

metaphoric.

In

'Echidna'the

poet

and

a farmer

track

an echidna

but

lose

track

and

wander

in

amnesiac circles:

. .

.

exhuming

the

deeply

choric question

of

rendering

our

meanderings

into

prose,

into

idle

chatterto

accompany

afew

beers

in

the

pub

that

night

Kinsella's

penchant

for

the

pastoral

is

brilliantly

in

this

fantastic

catalogue

of

death-filled

in

the wheatfields. Its

almost-gothic undertone

enhanced

bythe

use

of

slightlyold-fashionedwords

bier'

rather

than'coffin','husbandry','the

plenty'.

Here,

are

buried

alive

by

falling

into

wheat

silos,

mice

are

preserved

in

superphosphate,

packs

of wild

dogs

attack

sheep,

kangaroos

fight

off

rip

apart

domestic

dogs,

emus

are tripped

and

brutally

slaughtered

by

semi-automatic

rifle

rabbits

are

shot

and

dragged

to

trail

scent

for

capture

oflarger

beasts,

entrapped

cats

chew

off

paws

to

free

themselves.

Dogs'corpses,

stillborn

mangyfoxes

hunted

out,

snakes

decapitated

shovels,

a rabbiter's

suicide

in a

tin

humpy,

the

of a

drunken

student

prank

turning

into

a

at

a bush

ball,

weird

religious

ceremonies

black

moons,

Iightning

striking

wandoo

trees.

schoolboy

poet

thinks

of

Christo

when

he

has

to

the

hay

bales

and

knows

that

soon

he,ll

these

difficult

fields.

John

Kinsella's

pastorals

dread,

hardship

and graphic

beauty

are

written

a

deep

compassion.

travelling

alone together

recounts

a

trip

taken

in

t993

following

John

ESrre's

expedition

from

Adelaide,

SA

to

Albany,

WA

around

r5o years

ago.

Miriel

Lenore

had

wanted

to see

some

particular

Nullarbor

stone

formations

-

seeking

landscapes

not

land

-

and,

in-

stead,

ended

up examining

comparative

responses

to

the

contemporary

journey

taken

by

eight

older

women

and

two

bus

drivers

retracing

the

route

of the

twenty-five-year-old

explorer.

Miriel

Lenore

avoids

any

pursuit

of

imagined

au-

thEnticity

and

is knowingly

critical

in

relationto

his-

tory

and

so

doesn't

speak

as

John

Eyre.

euotations

from

Eyre's

journals

are

Iinchpins

throughout

the

book

along

withthe

complexities

of

the womens'life-

stories.

The

poems

are

direct

and

often

droll

when

en-

countering

some

of

the

lackadaisical

junkyardish

places

that

are

the

outback-

abandoned,

peeling

bits

and

pieces

contained

in

majestic

landscapes.

In,Is-

raelite

Bay'the

travellers

arrive

at

last

to

discover/

few

human

imprints/if

you

except

aweighttifiing

ma-

chine/beside

the road _

Lenore

is

also

adept

at disap-

pointment:

easy

to

miss

the

sculpture

on the plain

under

Mt

Arden:

atrainwheelfixed

on

atilted

rail

to honour

Eyre

who led

the

way

this

most

unlikely

of his

monuments

was

a

Bicentennial

proj

ect

of

the local

primary

school

where

the

Aboriginal

pupils

could

not

compete

in

races

unless

they

wore

shoes

they

did

not

own

and

at

the

same place

-'under

Mt

Arden

(i)'

the

wild

sad

cry

of

swans

brings

Eyrefiom

his

tent

their

northwardflight

promising

that

inland

sea

whose

glitter

would

be

salt

These poems

are

multi-layered

but

never

dense

or

af-

fected,

the

language

being

so intelligible

and precise.

In

just

sixty pages

Louise

Crisp

renders an

inten_

sity

which

is

sometimes

obscurely

personal

yet

al-


3/3

ways accessible

in

terms

of

poetics.

This is a non-

linear,

womanly,

spiritual, mystical

set

of

poems

where meaning

is deliberately

restrained and elu-

sive

-

but if

I

am

fish

can

I

ev

e

r

/b

e

rainbowl

The

bush

(in

the Snowy

Mountains

)

is

mysterious. The recur-

ring symbols

are flat

oval

stones from a meandering

river, blood,

masks and

bones. Here is sensuality

-

you

suck

on my

tongue/like a

pink-red

stone

-

an d

mythical

allegory

-

I

splash inthe

shallows

going pastthe

clefi

the hoodwidens

opening

l ike renewal

the

four

men camped there

wake next morning

fe

eling

tr ansfo

r

me

d

ov

e

rnight

intofemale

Crisp is

respectful of

nature;of

ghosts,

of indigenous

people

and she

records

their

massacre

in the

re -

gion.

She

has

aflairfor

devising

moments of

height-

ened

poetics

that

produce

an

originalityvia

extreme

simplicity:

the

weather

glides

ou t

of

my

bones

growing

shorter & shorter

the

sunfolds

me

up

for

winter

nothought

no memory

Pam Brown

is

overland's

poetry

editor.

four books five poets

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