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Challenging experience in a fine selection Stephen Oliver
is a transtasman poet who has always seemed to have had
a better reputation in New Zealand than in Australia. With
the benefit of this selection of the best of his work over
two decades, it is easy to side with the Kiwis. He has
written some very fine poems indeed, and judicious selection
has removed the unevenness which marred some of his earlier
volumes.
Oliver at his best has an ability to mix 'high' and 'low'
culture references and dictions without jarring, as in
the 1996 sequence of short poems, 'Islands of Wilderness
- A Romance', where the Roman de la Rose sits smoothly
next to Laurel and Hardy, Disney to Darwin and mansard
roofs to ansaphones. Topical references, indeed, abound,
from the Christian jockey Darren Beadman to the war in
Afghanistan and the discovery of the world's oldest tree
in Tasmania's West, yet the poems which contain them are
more than merely occasional. There are some wonderful similes:
the women 'whose eyes fall like rotten fruit about me',
'phlegm thick as gossip' and metaphors: 'The bow-wave /
turned in chrome coils', 'The grey overcoat of the sky
flung open! / A hundred buttons threaded with rain'.
If I have a criticism it is that sometimes Oliver's points
are too easily won. Occasionally a reference or a 'borrowed'
phrase sits too lightly on the surface of a poem, as, for
example, the Paterson near-quote 'There's movement at the
station' in 'Emblem for Dead Youth' or the mention of Janis
Joplin's 'duende'. He is at his best when not trying to
shoulder too much of the baggage of cultural heritage.
Despite the diversity of references, settings, themes and
styles, there is a unity of voice which emerges from the
collection. The persona of the poems is a man of wide experience,
of generous temperament, with a social conscience sharpened
with wit, and with more questions than answers for the
world around him. His keen eye is matched by a mind which
can juxtapose telling details and allow us the luxury of
the poem when the situation at first seems to call for
an anecdote, an argument or a lamentation.
This is a handsomely produced book, and with just a shade
under 200 pages (including an index - a rarity these days
in poetry collections) it is excellent value. For anyone
who likes poetry, 'Night of Warehouses' is a most enjoyable
read.
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'Night
of the Warehouses' is published by HeadworX
Publishers / Wellington, 2001
ISBN 0-473-07388-9
192 pp [paperback]
RRP NZ $26.00; Aust $22.00
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