Bookblog #58: Anthology



John Kinsella, The Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry (Penguin 2009)

I have no idea how I'd go about reviewing this book -- I'd probably indulge in a number of cavils that would reveal either my exemplary taste and erudition or the depths of my ignorance and pernickitiness. For example, I don't know whether to be pleased or ashamed that I noticed A D Hope's 'The Death of The Bird' is here called 'The Death of a Bird', and I've already devoted a whole post to a handful of irritating typos. A review would have to mention the yawning absence of Robert Adamson and probably others, would engage with John Kinsella's interestingly argumentative introduction, and would have a stab at divining a narrative embodied in the selection. This is not a review.

The poems are organised, conventionally enough, by their authors' birthdates. I found myself noticing this more and more as I progressed: who knew Mary Gilmore was born before Christopher Brennan, or that Ern Malley was one and two years respectively younger than his two progenitors? As the decades passed, things became increasingly personal:

There were poets I'd read at school, whose work was presented as either archetypically Australian (Banjo Paterson 1864–1941 and Henry Lawson 1867–1922) or topical, which in the 1950s meant they were about World War 2 and the Holocaust (John Blight 1913–95 and J S Manifold 1915–85).

There were people I'd heard read at Moratorium poetry readings in the 1960s: A D Hope (1907–2000), Roland Robinson (1912–92), David Campbell (1915–79).

James McAuley (1917–76) came and spoke to my English Honours seminar in 1967.

I got to know Dorothy Hewett (1923–2002) when I worked for Currency Press in the early 1970s.

Grace Perry (1927–87) wrote me a civil letter of rejection when she was editor of Poetry Australia.

I once had dinner with Bruce Beaver (1928–2004) and Brenda, to whom he addressed many of his poems, and was sitting beside him at an Adelaide Festival Writers' Week event when he muttered of PiO (b.1951), "He's a nonentity, isn't he?' (PiO was being loud and provocative.)

Vivian Smith (b.1933) was the supervisor of my aborted MA thesis; David Malouf (b.1934) lectured me brilliantly on the Jacobean playwrights in third year English.

Norman Talbot (1936–2004) got me and my classmates into trouble in our last year of high school by making us giggle about the Porter's vulgarities in Macbeth (Norman was on television).

In the 1970s, I accidentally insulted one eminent poet (b.1938) at a party by thinking he meant his day job when he spoke of his profession and I had a fling with the housemate of another (b.1945); the housemate was also a poet but didn't make the cut here.

I have sat on a literary prize panel with one of the poets (b.1967), and may have rejected a submission from another (b.1963) in my days as an editor.

The point of all this name dropping is that the experience of reading the anthology became less and less like a visit to a museum and more like a seance in which the voices of a community of creators became present. On flipping back just now to Frank the Poet (c1810–61) or Zora Cross (1890–1964), I find I read their poems differently, with a fuller sense of engaging with another mind. I stopped wondering why John Kinsella had included this poet and omitted that one, chosen this poem rather than that, and let myself ride on surge of voices. I became nervous as I approached the year of my own birth, and when it arrived (on page 287 of 393) it was like hitting an unexpected sweet core of a hard lolly: Martin JOhnston, Rhyll McMaster and Alf Taylor. Martin was a friend of mine -- and I was in total awe of his poetic brilliance. I must have heard him read 'Gradus ad Parnassum', his inclusion here, a dozen times, and found it intimidating -- mainly because it talks about Vladimir Mayakowsky, whom I hadn't read and still haven't. Now I just think it's brilliant, with a tremendously resonant melancholy undertow (it's a playful and erudite piece about rejigging a poem Mayakovsky wrote just before he killed himself).

The grumbling pedant in me refused to lie down even here. Both of Martin's books on my shelves that contain the poem have the lines:

And critics seem to think
that's all passé. Dr Tiptoes
wouldn't take it seriously.

Somehow the anthology has managed to use the version I remember Martin reading prior to publication:

And critics seem to think
that's all passé. Jim Tulip
wouldn't take it seriously.

I think that's a mistake. 'Dr Tiptoes' communicates to any reader, with the extra fillip of comedy for those who recognise the reference to an Eng Lit scholar at Sydney University in the 1960s; 'Jim Tulip' for most readers, including possibly the anthologist (b.1963), is just plain obscure.

It does seem that for me grumbling pedantry is one of the abiding joys of poetry.

In short, I don't know if you'd enjoy this book, but I had a great time.

Posted: Mon - March 9, 2009 at 06:16 AM           |

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