KEY POINTS:
Hone Tuwhare's passing throws into sharp relief the paucity of good New Zealand poetry. Everyone has a stab at it but, as with anything which looks easy, very few succeed.
But why do we fall about at the feet of poets whose work is just plain dull? I suspect it is fear of being labelled a cultural philistine, similar to the nation's reluctance for robust debate about contemporary art. If it's obscure and you don't understand it, then it must be good.
I think that's nonsense and, as shown when I voiced my opinion about the braying portaloo masquerading as high art, I don't give a hoot if those self-appointed experts, the "isn't it marvellous darling" brigade, call me stupid.
Give me Hamish Keith's plain speaking any day. I love the way, in his new book and television series, he doesn't talk down to people about art, just the way you might discuss good or bad cooking recipes. He may not agree with that analogy, but if I can get passionate about a recipe, I can get excited about a painting when similar language is used.
Yes, yes, I know art and literature is personal and subjective, the eye of the beholder and all that, but human excrement smeared on a blanket is never artistic, and anything written in broken line spacing is not poetic. But try telling that to the literary critics.
At New Zealand poetry's lowest level are those who believe writing down the first thoughts that come into your head, employing no grammar or punctuation, all in lower case, puts you on a par with e e cummings.
Then you get the poets with a capital P who've established a reputation, had numerous collections published, but who I can not, for the life of me, take seriously. I know I'll be shot for saying this, but Elizabeth Smither is a glaring example. I blame publisher Alister Taylor - he published her first book because he'd purchased a couple of her then-husband Michael's portraits and was being approached by this woman who described herself as "a lady poet wearing fur coats".
Brian Turner is another in this category. Here's an example from the latest Listener:
"On the clearest nights
the sky is full of dice
and significant is a word
denoting something darkly trite..."
The last word says it all.
Now dancer Douglas Wright has joined the bard-wagon with a collection about himself as - yawn - a gay man. Not content with boring us rigid after years twittering on about gay politics (whatever they are), he's now foisted lines like this on the public:
"The why of this was planted deep
in the fetus of my soul
all I know is the first I knew
myself was pronounced wrong". Note the absence of punctuation, ergo it must be poetry.
It reminds me of the cleaner at some great European art gallery who tossed out what he thought was a bag of rubbish but which turned out to be an expensive sculpture. "But it wasn't roped off," was the poor chap's excuse. If it's roped off, it's art. If it contains no full stops or capital letters, it's a poem.
Wright's scribbling is the gay equivalent of the housewife's lament:
"i watched my life
go down the plughole
with the water
from the family dishes..."
North & South magazine publishes this folksy, give-it-a-go sort of poetry and - gawd help us - readers lap it up, so there's no accounting for taste. Here's last month's example by a Marcel Currin about killing a cockroach on Christmas Day:
"Little fellow or fellowette
I care not which
wedged between sink & stovetop.."
(While leaving my laptop to find this gem, the cat sat on the keyboard and squashed out two lines of superior quality poetry which I may submit for publication.)
Most of this stuff should never see the light of day.
Then again, I suppose it's no different to other rubbish printed to fill the spaces between advertisements, and my profession is often equally guilty. Much of what passes for journalism today is more interesting for the unasked questions, like a recent fulsome profile of Wellington wide-boy Terry Serepisos, or the acceptance that Greenpeace really did "chase" the Japanese whalers away.
It's a great con, but harmless. Unlike the biggest lie ever printed, that is, "pull tab to open". Purchased a flip-top box of laundry powder lately, or a box of clingwrap? The tearaway opening never works. Penetration can only succeed with a sharp knife, even an axe, to cut through the crap.
Just like so much New Zealand verse.
