Peter Dane: The Albatross Is Dead

Hudson Cresset

$22.95

Review: by Guy Allan*

Peter Dane's book is a sequence of 60 sonnets, all with the same rhyme scheme.

Inevitably, one part of reading it is in appreciating the form - the run of words in a line towards the rhyme, the way that the concluding couplet nutshells what has preceded it, the elaboration of the central metaphor ...

In this respect, attention is on Dane's technical skill, to a large extent on how successfully he avoids the stiffness and restriction that might be thought to be inherent in an "archaic" structure.

So, one of the chief sources of pleasure is that the writing is so supple, the artifice always recognisable but seldom obtrusive.

Anyone who liked Vikram Seth's sonnet novel The Golden Gate will know the quality.

Dane sustains this fine balance through the meditations of his persona, a betrayed woman.

The focus is sometimes tight and narrow, on the actions of her deceitful partner and her feelings about them.

At other times, it broadens to wonderings about how to handle a world of unsafe assumptions and irreparable damage.

* Guy Allan is an Auckland trade union official and freelance writer.