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recordari

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 22:13:11 +1200

Leigh Davis in the Reading Room discusses Wittgenstein, Curnow, taste in poetry and a few other things besides. Lots to read, but some interesting things covered, if you have the energy. The link is to page 7, where Lone Kauri Road is covered in some detail, with sample verse.

In…

Lilith __

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 21:41:00 +1200

More Curnow, anyone?

Yes! I don't know any, but would love to read what others serve up. :-)

recordari

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 21:21:32 +1200

Hmm, feel like I've hijacked this otherwise brilliant thread.

More Curnow, anyone?

Lilith __

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 20:57:25 +1200

I'll keep serving them up, if you keep slam-dunking them.

You seem to have a foot in more than one pie there, Jack. ;-)

recordari

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 19:42:19 +1200

#thatboyneedstherapy
The whole album kind of works.

another first
I'll keep serving them up, if you keep slam-dunking them.

Sacha

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 18:37:14 +1200

I consulted Google, and was reliable informed there's no such thing

yay, another first #weareonaroll

nzlemming

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 18:23:59 +1200

That's what I love about PAS – you get to see some very weird shit.

#oddlycompelling #thatboyneedstherapy

James Butler

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 18:12:17 +1200

OMG, now I'm seeing sofas EVERYWHERE!!!! The red one is nice.

Wondered when you would notice. Thanks. The physical manifestation is in my lounge.

And there I was thinking it was some kind of lightswitch.

recordari

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 17:30:18 +1200

chin-furniture

I consulted Google, and was reliable informed there's no such thing.

However, I am disappointed to note that this helpful wall chart does not include Chaise Lounge.

Sacha

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 17:19:18 +1200

Wondered when you would notice

thought it was well-trimmed chin-furniture :)

recordari

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 16:59:30 +1200

OMG, now I'm seeing sofas EVERYWHERE!!!! The red one is nice.

Wondered when you would notice. Thanks. The physical manifestation is in my lounge.

Have couch, will travel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8BWBn26bX0

Lilith __

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 16:31:58 +1200

OMG, now I'm seeing sofas EVERYWHERE!!!! The red one is nice.

Kate Hannah

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 10:51:20 +1200

oh agree re the simplification of a way of 'creating' a culture anew, by one's self, in a musuem – but I'm a sad mix of sentiment and practicality when it comes to my poetry – a bonus being that I don't have to teach it any more so can…

Lilith __

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 10:42:07 +1200

with a happy ending
Full stop

Amen. :-)

recordari

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 09:56:07 +1200

we are the theses of our parents
bracketed and put out for marking...

A+

A life history
a two minute mystery
or a love poem.

Garden
back veranda
It's spring
there's Frost and light fornication in mind
with a happy ending
Full stop

Ian Dalziel

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 09:39:12 +1200

In a
manner of meaning
life is
a flurry of commas
& then
a full stop.

The inbetween arguments
and agreements mean-
everything.

a life sentence, even...
and ya meet some real colons
along the way, too
:- )

we are the theses of our parents
bracketed and put out for…

Ian Dalziel

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 09:32:12 +1200

speak softly and carry a big switch...

recordari

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 07:52:03 +1200

chaise longue!

I do like a good chaise, but not for too longue. ;-)

a flurry of commas
& then
a full stop.
A comma coma
'Ja make an
aroma?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vi76bxT7K6U

Islander

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 00:18:32 +1200

And
nothing

O O

Islander

Sun, 19 Jun 2011 22:51:08 +1200

In a
manner of meaning
life is
a flurry of commas
& then
a full stop.

The inbetween arguments
and agreements mean-
everything.

Lilith __

Sun, 19 Jun 2011 22:29:50 +1200

psychiatrist’s couch :)

I know! Quite.

Sacha

Sun, 19 Jun 2011 22:26:30 +1200

not a chaise longue

psychiatrist's couch :)

Lilith __

Sun, 19 Jun 2011 22:01:29 +1200

BTW, Jack, I have ONLY JUST REALISED that your gravatar is a switch and not a chaise longue! I must be cuckoo, I know. I used to wonder why you had a sofa. :-)

Lilith __

Sun, 19 Jun 2011 20:40:01 +1200

Can I have a brief rave about Eileen Duggan, who I think is in danger of slipping into obscurity? Born in 1894, she was a little older than Curnow, but her best work is still fresh:

Night

You are the still caesura
That breaks a line in two;
A quiet…

Lilith __

Sun, 19 Jun 2011 19:25:15 +1200

He was a clever little balloon man.

Really dig this too:

I, Time, am all these, yet these exist
Among my mountainous fabrics like a mist,

recordari

Sun, 19 Jun 2011 17:51:47 +1200

Funny how some things stick.

His perhaps hand still
( [sic] comes carefully
out of Nowhere)
25 years later.

He was a clever little balloon man.

Sacha

Sun, 19 Jun 2011 15:46:46 +1200

wasamaster

the way he placed words across
lines had a big impact on me

didn't use capitals for a couple o
years too

recordari

Sun, 19 Jun 2011 15:21:38 +1200

When I said interesting, what I meant was less rhythmic, but YMMV.

I think any device used by poets to make words
flow
.........in the
......................way

they want them to is
important.

e.e. cummings again wasamaster, as in [in just-]. Have to link to it, because can't insert NBSPs.

Sacha

Sun, 19 Jun 2011 15:12:32 +1200

This, from 'Time', would be interesting without commas.

I Time am all these yet these exist
Among my mountainous fabrics like a mist
So do they the measurable world resist.

I Time call down condense confer
On the willing memory the shapes these were:
I more than your conscious…

recordari

Sun, 19 Jun 2011 14:54:19 +1200

Simply wonderful.

Ain't it just.

This, from 'Time', would be interesting without commas.

I, Time, am all these, yet these exist
Among my mountainous fabrics like a mist,
So do they the measurable world resist.

I, Time, call down, condense, confer,
On the willing memory the shapes these were:
I,…

Russell Brown

Sun, 19 Jun 2011 10:44:56 +1200

A tui clucked, shat, whistled thrice.

A line both documentary and onomatopoeiac. Simply wonderful.

bmk

Sun, 19 Jun 2011 10:10:24 +1200

I love commas and find the idea of them not being there a little distressing. The only exception I can think of is where the writer writes, like James Ellroy, in short, snappy sentences.

I suppose text may still be understandable without the commas but I imagine it would make…

Lilith __

Sat, 18 Jun 2011 20:10:30 +1200

Re: commas, I've always loved this passage from Gertrude Stein's The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas :

Haweis and his wife, later Mina Loy were also in Florence. Their
home had been dismantled as they had had workmen in it but they put
it all in order to give us…

Claire at Latitude

Sat, 18 Jun 2011 19:14:02 +1200

On the matter of the comma, @Cromie, I think Curnow may himself have been quoting: I've seen that one attributed to Oscar Wilde.

Islander

Sat, 18 Jun 2011 15:12:53 +1200

"Alone we are born"

-o no we're not: unless we hatch from an abandoned egg, there is always another being around.

recordari

Sat, 18 Jun 2011 13:31:05 +1200

Back on topic, this Obituary from the Telegraph in 2001was interesting;

Throughout his life, Curnow's work was inventive and unpredictable. Despite his intensity of focus, his poems were full of wit and originality. He remained sanguine about his achievements. "The important thing in assessing the merit of a poem," he…

recordari

Sat, 18 Jun 2011 12:43:56 +1200

... Bill Hammond also flips the bird...

Wow! That's the first Hammond related offering I've seen recently for under 20,000. Sale coming up has one estimated at 300,000+. I like his work, but I'd rather have a house to live in.

Ian Dalziel

Sat, 18 Jun 2011 08:35:24 +1200

... Bill Hammond also flips the bird...

linger

Sat, 18 Jun 2011 06:01:51 +1200

On the theme of extinction, here’s an update of a classic haiku:

The same old pond’s there
still; but listen – hush! the sound
of no frog jumping

(Doesn't get much applause in performance.
Could be worse, though: one early draft of this ended "all have croaked".)

Sacha

Sat, 18 Jun 2011 00:32:02 +1200

The government will therefore introduce legislation (under urgency) to require a quota of verse (including commas) per day

Nah, the market will provide, eh

Lilith __

Sat, 18 Jun 2011 00:05:02 +1200

hard to go past Barry Cleavin for the witty bird references.

Lilith __

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 23:57:56 +1200

- the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids’ flutter which says

we are for each other; then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

e.e.cummings

Not a NZ poet, but strong on punctuation.

nzlemming

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 23:18:41 +1200

I was privileged to work on ‘Early Days Yet,’ Shirley Horrocks’ 2001 documentary and what Allen said that day will always remain with me: “A poet can work very hard all day to put in a comma…then spend all of the next day taking it out"

Obviously, poets are doing…

ChrisW

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 22:04:21 +1200

I long wondered what was it that made 1911 a marvellous year
…Eh? It’s a real struggle getting to that reading of it.
Well, seems the straightforward reading to me, and I would understand also to Smithyman who was a colleague of Curnow's over many years. But yes, there is…

Cromie

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 20:39:55 +1200

I was privileged to work on 'Early Days Yet,' Shirley Horrocks' 2001 documentary and what Allen said that day will always remain with me: "A poet can work very hard all day to put in a comma...then spend all of the next day taking it out"

JLM

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 20:25:08 +1200

“Not I” is therefore “some child” born at a later time;
indeed, perhaps born in some future,
unimaginable at the time of narration,
“marvellous year”.

I sent this link to my daughter, a Curnow fan, addressing her as "my child born in a marvellous year" which tickled her greatly.

Gregor Ronald

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 20:21:27 +1200

It's hard to go past Baxter;

Alone we are born
And die alone
Yet see the red-gold cirrus
over snow-mountain shine.

That'll do me.

It's not hard to walk upright here, but it's hard to walk in the right direction.

linger

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 19:22:06 +1200

Didn't quite track down the reference within 15 minutes, but here it is:
"Onward" by Caroline Williams (1987)

linger

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 19:04:51 +1200

popular New Zealand song
from a poem by W Chamberlain.

* * *

I long wondered what was it that made 1911 a marvellous year
…Eh? It’s a real struggle getting to that reading of it.
The voice of the poem (“I”) is presumably Curnow, born in 1911, who watches…

Lilith __

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 18:53:23 +1200

Ah, it was Philip Trusttum. And the only one of his mower paintings I can find online.

Lilith __

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 18:28:43 +1200

MOWER: RUAPEKAPEKA

Burn! But brilliantly done. :-)

[can someone remind me of the name of that South Island painter who did a series of huge heroic paintings of his motor mower?]

Lilith __

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 18:26:18 +1200

And just to lower the tone I think we have to have this too:

No moa, no moa
In old Ao-tea-roa.
Can't get 'em.
They've et 'em;
They've gone and there aint no moa!

(popular New Zealand song, quoted in Trotter and McCulloch 1984)

Lilith __

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 18:20:42 +1200

Te Ara has some wonderful upright moa: this one and this. Of course we now know they probably didn't walk upright most of the time! Great poem anyhow. :-)

ChrisW

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 18:02:19 +1200

Thanks for bringing the 100th birthday to attention of this Curnow fan too. It seems clear he did learn to stand upright here, so it's interesting his assertion in his youthful 30s/early 1940s that he wouldn't. And the moa perception is of its time too, the failure to adapt rather…

Richard Aston

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 15:13:45 +1200

Graig – thanks
Fantastic line " Tell me, mother of the empty grave, how high is heaven?"

Marcus Turner

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 15:13:18 +1200

Just while I think about it, here’s something for Friday from the Udmurt Republic in Russia. Starts off a bit new-agey, but gets a nice groove on, and it’s beautiful, too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lk_LNBWiOUI

Jeremy Andrew

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 15:04:11 +1200

I hadn't heard about Ken Arvidson, he was one of my lecturers on the aforementioned eng-lit track. He was an odd duck – not what one would expect a poet to be like (which is probably a result of me having grown up while Sam Hunt was touring schools).

Russell Brown

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 14:12:00 +1200

Excellent Media 7 last night, Russell.

Thanks Geoff. I thought I wasn't quite on form personally, but Jose's two tracks were brilliant.

Geoff Lealand

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 13:18:07 +1200

Another recent, sad death of a NZ poet was Ken Arvidson. A real gent who taught in the English Dept at the University of Waikato.

Excellent Media 7 last night, Russell.

Jeremy Andrew

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 13:15:49 +1200

I saw the headline and thought you were referring toIBM's birthday that's all over the tech wires.

Sigh, now I feel like a geek, me who was an eng-lit major at Uni.

John Armstrong

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 12:59:35 +1200

Mmm. The reason I linked to Nepia's article, 'Closing the Gaps', is because it raises some critical questions about the somewhat cosy narrative that King and others have produced. I don't know enough about Curnow's oeuvre to make a judgement, but the poem that Russell has posted here – an…

Kate Hannah

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 11:49:44 +1200

Did my MA with Nepia. Lovely chap and 'tis indeed an excellent article.

And thanks Russell for celebrating Curnow today – those words still resonate so many years later, as we all learn and relearn that trick. One of the little notes above my desk has a scrawled Carol Ann…

Deb Mudie

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 11:29:01 +1200

I've been enjoying the Curnow readings on National Radio...

I was about to say that very thing. They've been great listening, the last few days.

Craig Ranapia

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 11:21:26 +1200

I've got to admit that you've quoted the obvious anthology piece (which it is for good reason), but the Curnow poems that always get me is Magnificat from his 1972 sequence Trees, Effigies, Moving Objects:

Who hasn’t sighted Mary
as he hung hot-paced
by the skin of the humped highway…

Marcus Turner

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 11:10:55 +1200

I've been enjoying the Curnow readings on National Radio, and how they're presented in context.

John Armstrong

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 11:01:06 +1200

If you can get hold of the newest number of the New Zealand Journal of History, Nepia Mahuika's article has some powerful things to say about 'learning the trick of standing upright here'. No online version yet I'm afraid, but it will more than reward a walk to your local…

Public Address

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 11:01:06 +1200

Discussion from blog post.