Solo and Chorus

Though this new collection by A.D. Hope contains several poems not included in The Wandering Islands, there is none which shows any striking advance in theme or method. Mr Hope’s broad, direct narrative style, hispage 455 praise of sexuality, and his bludgeoning satire place him, I think, in the same paddock with A.R.D. Fairburn. But more than Fairburn he suffers from the illusion that poems can be made by setting down good horse-sense with rhyme at the ends of the lines. It might have been better if he had employed occasionally the free verse forms which he disparages in his Introduction to Australian Poetry, 1960. But he is still the most vigorous poet in modern Australia.

The anthology itself is unremarkable. In this selection from a year’s Australian verse, all the poems are competent and all lack fire. The best poems are ‘Lament for the Makers’, by Vincent Buckley (a modern version of Dunbar’s masterpiece) and ‘The Garden of Ships’, by Douglas Stewart, who is slowly growing in strength and lucidity.

Fyodor Tyutchev influenced the development of Pasternak’s poetry. These translations carry a strange spirit of desolation, which can only have come from their originals –

I, traceless, all will appear the same:
Night that is yet to be, sweep
Of the spreading steppe, snow
Howling where I halted . . .

The lines here quoted are taken from a piece ‘On His Brother’s Death’; but they are characteristic of the undercurrent of Tyutchev’s work. It is a harsh, original voice speaking from a hundred years ago, and through the words of the translator. Since nearly all translations from the Russian are absurdly inept, I hope that Charles Tomlinson will continue to use his rare talent in this way. We could do with some good translations from Pushkin and from Blok.

1961 (246)