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Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington N.Z. Vol. 9, No. 1. March 1, 1946
Poetry No. 17
Poetry No. 17
Much of the verse contents are summed up by the lines—
"Are these the new year's quota, the nineteen-thirty class,
Born in the hungry year?"
in Opportunity School by Bernard Smith. There is a good deal of the naive leftism of the 1930's—the worst of Auden and Spender—and, especially from G. R. Gilbert, some self-conscious adolescent posturing. In the case of The Galley by W. Hart-Smith, the automatically introduced social content ruins an otherwise excellent poem. The war poetry is graphic but still devoted to "passive suffering." the ballad by J. F. Lewis is an unpalatable mixture of Lawson and Auden. The poem with the most form, and for that reason alone the best, is The Ninety and Nine, by the same author.