Title: James K. Baxter Complete Prose. Volume 1

Author: James K. Baxter

Editor: John Edward Weir

Publication details: Victoria University Press, 2015, Wellington

Part of: The James K. Baxter Complete Prose Collection

Conditions of use

Share:

page break

Contents

Foreword

xvii

Dunedin and Christchurch: the Early Years

1943-1948

1. Before Sunrise [1]; A description	1
2. The Kite	2
3. Short Extracts from My Diary – Ten Years Hence	3
4. [The divorce of poetry]	4
5. Before Sunrise [2]	4
6. Mood	7
7. Prose Poem [To the Great Salt Heart Return the Veined Rivers]	8
8. Wilfred Owen	8
9. The Sea Stayed	10
10. Thoughts Concerning a Career	10
11. [When the wound has grown shallow]	11
12. Foreword [to Cold Spring]	12
13. [Notes for ‘Poetry in New Zealand’]	13
14. [In those times when the Church had grown rich in the goods of the world]	14
15. Poetry in New Zealand	15
16. Dream Series	18
17. Enlightenment	20
18. The Axe – a preview	24
19. To Wake the Nations Underground	25
20. [The Dead House]	26
21. [In course of conversations]	28
22. Gulls	28
23. [Ex Nihilo]	28
24. [Biography]	29
25. Pilgrimage	29
26. To Accidie	30
27. Manifesto	31
28. The Furies	31
29. When the Wind Blows	32
30. The White Gull	34
31. Before Sunrise [3]	37
32. Stone Lions	38page break
33. Salvation Army Aesthete?	40
34. Dylan Thomas and the Lit. Club	42
35. Barrage against Bawdiness	43
36. Bolshies under the Bed	44

The Wellington Years 1949-1965

37. The Name and the Game	47
38. Why Writers Stop Writing	49
39. Blue Peter	52
40. Man Alone	55
41. At Dead Low Water and Sonnets	57
42. New Zealand Poets	60
43. American Poet	62
44. Religious Opinion	63
45. Poetry at Home	64
46. Nature Poet	65
47. Recent Trends in New Zealand Poetry	65
48. More Poems	77
49. Outside the Walls	78
50. Introduction to Verse 1951	79
51. Introduction [to Alistair Campbell’s Mine Eyes Dazzle]	79
52. Choice of Belief in Modern Society	80
53. Denis Glover’s Poetry	87
54. Social Delinquency in Modern Literature	88
55. Early New Zealand Poetry	91
56. Modern New Zealand Poetry	98
57. Broadsheets	113
58. New Light on Eliot	113
59. Across the Tasman	114
60. The Maori Motif	115
61. The Birth of Christ	116
62. Voyage and Discovery	117
63. [‘Centurion’ and Notes on a Poem]	118
64. A Meditation	119
65. Starveling Year	120
66. Man in Leather Breeches	120
67. Body, Heart and Mind	121
68. Strong Drink Not a Food	122
69. Renaissance Man	123
70. Is There a Colour Bar in New Zealand?	124
71. Notes Towards an Aesthetic	127page break
72. Arawata Bill, a sequence of poems	132
73. Critic’s Philosophy	134
74. Milton’s Epic	135
75. Ryecroft and Gissing	135
76. Machines and People	136
77. Songs before Twilight	137
78. After the Elizabethans	137
79. Poet and Patrons	138
80. Dylan Thomas	139
81. Men of God	140
82. Aboriginal Legends	140
83. A Woman’s Love Poetry	141
84. Poet and Critic	142
85. Songs from the Mind	142
86. Poetry in New Zealand	143
87. Without Dogma [1]	144
88. The Fire and the Anvil; notes on modern poetry	145
89. Apple Mash; a moral fable	198
90. Without Dogma [2]	202
91. Public Faces	203
92. The Eastern Mind	203
93. American Voices	204
94. Lisping in Numbers	205
95. Christian Belief	205
96. Exotic Landscapes	206
97. Dante in the Antipodes	206
98. George Barker in an Irish Hat	208
99. A Poet’s Letters	210
100. The Phoenix and the Crow; a parable	211
101. On the Side of Life	213
102. Back to the Desert	216
103. Tales from the Irish	226
104. The Delphic Voice	226
105. Master of Style	228
106. Thoughts Taking Shape	228
107. Society and Happiness	229
108. The Earnest Agnostic	230
109. Strictly Personal	230
110. Close to Nature	230
111. The Poet in Solitude	232
112. Defenceless Village	233
113. Over the Tin Fence: A consideration of the life and work of Oscar Wilde	233page break
114. Juvenile Delinquency and Divorce	239
115. Some Time Ago	240
116. The Courts of Love	242
117. Head in a Bag	243
118. Shepherd of the Fold	244
119. The Moralist’s Cloak	245
120. Venus in her Western Bed	246
121. The World of the Creative Artist	251
122. The Critic as Schoolmaster	259
123. Poetry among the Ruins	261
124. Outlook for Poetry	263
125. Balanced Investigation	265
126. Comparison of Two Eighteenth-Century Satirists, Pope and Swift	266
127. Stories by Poets	269
128. A Note on Henry Lawson	269
129. Unwilling Pilgrim	270
130. The Story of Butch	272
131. The Mathesons at Home	274
132. The Sunlit Hour	281
133. From a Sunburnt Land	282
134. Something to Consider	283
135. To Have and To Hold	287
136. Evening Voices	292
137. Talking of Writing	292
138. A Tree in Cypress	293
139. Anaemic Ghosts	294
140. The Lower Slopes	294
141. The Voyage of the Hurunui	295
142. Critics and Poets	296
143. A Whirlwind Voice	297
144. Time and the Bell	298
145. A Book with a View	304
146. The Shaken Earth	304
147. Spiritual Crisis	305
148. A Herbal Whiff	306
149. The Town under the Sea	306
150. Walking up Castle Street	308
151. [Note accompanying an early version of Jack Winter’s Dream]	310
152. Dylan Thomas and Swinburne	310
153. Christian Living	311
154. Disgruntled Foghorn	312
155. The Primary School Bulletin	312page break
156. Immanuel’s Land	315
157. Parable	317
158. New Zealand and Disarmament	318
159. The Innocent Eye	319
160. In Memoriam A.R.D. Fairburn	320
161. New Poets	320
162. New Zealand Poet Defends ‘Bohemian Reaction’ in Society	321
163. A Painful Joy	321
164. Critical Approaches	322
165. Poets in a Diminished World	323
166. Romantic Love	325
167. In the Case of Bohemia versus Suburbia	326
168. Akitio: A Country School and its Community	330
169. Nonsense Wins	342
170. Old and New	343
171. Around the Clubs ... Newman Society	344
172. Two Kinds of Simplicity	344
173. Poet is ‘first N.Z. link’ in East Cultural Exchanges	345
174. The Outsider	346
175. Marxist Poet	346
176. The Lonely Rebel	347
177. A Drained Life	348
178. Created from Pain	349
179. Jack Winter’s Dream; a Play for Voices [account of the play and its production for radio]	350
180. A Writer’s Vocation	351
181. The Aardvark and the Onager	352
182. Journal of Trip to Asia	354
183. Notes from India	371
184. Imaginary dialogue between a sinful Catholic poet and a sorrowful Irish Jansenist	375
185. A Niggle at Catholic Verse	377
186. The Earthly Paradise	379
187. Aspects of Indian Life	380
188. The Fuss about Numbers	384
189. The Family of Saints	385
190. Explaining the Poets	387
191. The Monastic Life	388
192. A Visit from Mr James Baxter	388
193. The Banyan Tree	389
194. Mixed Voices	389
195. Byron and Allegra	390
196. Double Identity	391page break
197. Japanese Theatre	392
198. New Zealand Criticism	393
199. Low Stakes – and High	394
200. The Right to Speak	395
201. Poems beyond Fashion	396
202. A Sack behind Him	397
203. [Programme note for Richard Campion’s production of The Wide Open Cage at the Unity Theatre, Wellington, on 19 November, 1959]	398
204. A Master Spirit	399
205. Antipodean Voyages	399
206. A Gap in the Spectrum	400
207. A Private Labyrinth	401
208. A Friend of the Family	402
209. The Age of Anxiety	403
210. A Life of Pleasure	403
211. Bedside Manner	404
212. Portrait of the Artist as a New Zealander	405
213. Kilokery and Kalekhan; a study of Indian village life	406
214. [Journal, February 1960]	412
215. Writers in New Zealand: a questionnaire	416
216. Lent in Retrospect	418
217. Disquieting American [1]	419
218. The Company of Poets	420
219. Disquieting American [2]	421
220. The Blue Divan	421
221. Sisyphus and the Angel	425
222. A Literary Friendship	426
223. Flowers and Thorns	427
224. Inner Worlds	427
225. Rules for (one) Catholic Writer	428
226. A Child’s Complaint	429
227. Notes from a Guitar	430
228. ‘Working All Day’	431
229. [‘The Fisherman’; a TV script]	432
230. Incense to Idols	434
231. Letter to a Woman Writer	435
232. Eliot and Joyce	437
233. The Kiwi and Mr Curnow	438
234. Private Lives, Public Follies	442
235. Two Plays	443
236. Staying at Balisodare	444
237. Human Explanations	446page break
238. James Joyce [1]	447
239. The Lady and the Minister	447
240. Attached Women	450
241. James Joyce [2]	451
242. Between Two Cultures	451
243. Poetry and Ambition	452
244. Man and Poet	453
245. Three for Thinkers	454
246. Solo and Chorus	454
247. West and East	455
248. Sacrifice	456
249. Is it Poetry?	458
250. Russian and Irish	458
251. A Vegetable Bouquet for Mr Curnow	459
252. Unbelief among the Lepers	467
253. Doubt and Devotion	469
254. A Good Keen Man [1]	470
255. A Clear Eye	470
256. A Good Keen Man [2]	471
257. Rabindranath Tagore: an appreciation in his centenary year	472
258. Poetic Attitudes	477
259. Devotional Reading	478
260. The Peasant Vision	478
261. Return to India	479
262. A Step Backwards	480
263. Guinness is Best	481
264. Essay on the Higher Learning	482
265. New Zealand in Colour	485
266. The Virgin and the Unicorn	514
267. Reconstructions	516
268. The Big Questions	517
269. Selected Poems	517
270. Excellent Plays	518
271. Australian Poets	519
272. Unicorn Waking	520
273. Wounded People	521
274. Nobody Loves a Critic	521
275. Commentaries	522
276. A Pig Island Journal (comments on the art of poetry)	523
277. A Bush Carpenter’s Outfit	526
278. Valuable Reprints	528
279. Literary Middlemen	528
280. Horse; A Novel	529page break
281. Breaking New Ground	589
282. New Zealand Writing	592
283. A New Zealand Poet	592
284. Unintended Cross	593
285. Pain, Resentment his Inspiration	595
286. Notes Made in Winter	596
287. The Tragic Pregnancies	599
288. The Big Season	600
289. The World of Sam Cash	601
290. Smoke Signals	602
291. Clerks and Cops	602
292. Clear Lenses	608
293. A Face in the Mirror	609
294. Impeccably Moderate	610
295. Writing and Existence	611
296. Saved from the Thames	616
297. Words and Ideas	617
298. The Sacred Craft	617
299. Further Notes on New Zealand Poetry	618
300. Poetry and Education	630
301. James K. Baxter: In their Words	646
302. The Human Condition [1]	650
303. A Political Diagnosis	651
304. Tribal Behaviour	652
305. A New and Strong Talent	653
306. Break-through	654
307. Henry Lawson	655
308. Our Lady and the Soul at the Door	656
309. Deprived People	658
310. Letter to a Young Poet	659
311. A Human Testament	661
312. Messages from the Cellar	663
313. Poetry Yearbook	664
314. Suburban Mirrors	665
315. The Rabbit Warren	666
316. The Power of Mrs Grundy	668
317. Smell of the Lamp	671
318. The Double Vocation	672
319. The Sudden Sun	672
320. Pope John’s Council	674
321. [Poetry 1964]	675
322. A Sense of Urgency	677
323. A Maori Prophet	677page break
324. Domestic Entanglements	678
325. James K. Baxter Speaking at the Opening of an Exhibition of Paintings by Drew Peters	679
326. Wild Honey	680
327. Australian Voices	681
328. The Quality of Boldness	683
329. Three Poets	684
330. Return to Tradition	685
331. No Ordinary Sun	686
332. Poets New and Old	687
333. Drama and Criticism	688
334. Who was Ned Kelly?	688
335. For the Methodical and for Muddlers	691
336. The Pythoness	693
337. Inside the Tribe	701
338. Voices from the Suburbs	701
339. Bread and a Pension	702
340. Our Lady in the Bullring	705
341. A Boy Killed	707
342. Sex and Paradise	708
343. Enigmatic Novelist	709
344. In the Early World	709
345. Vietnam as a Bullring	712
346. Good Pope John	713
347. Some Problems of Catholic Writers	716
348. Literary Gossip	717
349. Debate on Vietnam	718
350. A Sponge of Vinegar	720
351. Conversation about Writing	721
352. Beginnings	723
353. Virtue Alarmed [1]	729
354. Two Good Plays	730
355. The Shaking of the Tree	730
356. A City was Born	733
357. Virtue Alarmed [2]	734
358. Mr Shand and the Rain of Fire (an open letter)	735
359. Our Lady of the Desert	736
360. A Parade of Poets	737
361. T.S. Eliot’s Background	739
362. With Stubble and Overcoat	740
363. TV Outlook; reply to a survey	742
364. Before the Innocence of God	743
365. Foreword to The Tree House and other poems for children	745page break
366. Visit from a Poet	746
367. [I am Negro]	747
368. [Baxter on his own Poetry]	747
369. The Idea of Progress	749
370. Verse Collections	751
371. Vietnam Protest	752
372. The Africans	753