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Spike Poetry 1945

By I. A. G.

What has happened to poetry at Victoria? Where is the adolescent moaning and the posturing against the system? This is the first time I have had difficulty in finding— a bad poem. Whether it is the war or returned men, or record enrolment, or a New Zealand renaissance on the way I know not. But there are real poets among us. W. Easterbrooke Smith, Erik de Mauny and Pat Wilson will stand up to printing in any journal in the country. W. H. Oliver and Catherine Crosse are not quite up to them in technical competence, though when the latter accepts the guidance of Baudelaire she writes with feeling and skill. The choice of a prize winner is not easy. I like de Mauny's evocative precision; I like Easterbrook Smith's astringent metaphysical lines; but I think since I must choose, I'll have the award go to the more imaginative presentation of Pat Wilson.

But if you keep like this we'll have to make a volume of you all. You're too good for typescript.

To be forever remembering	Volition draining
The past obloquies of afflicted silence	Silence chilling
To regret eternally	The warm enunciation of deep thought killing.
The passionate parade of speechless minutes	I have traced the subtle synthesis
To fall recurrently	Reached for consumation, raised you
Into a poverty of words	To a drum-beat of passion, sought
In this frustration is death.	The eternal formula, found
You are the desired attainment	Empty phrases of futility, died
The goal of the aspiring mind;	In the shattering segregation.
Rock-water to the eye	Would my words
Of the desert traveller delectable,	Could crush your mind like hammers
Green corn to the sight	Caress you
Of the famine-stricken unbelievable,	Like falling fingers of dying leaf
Spring flower to the mind	Clothe you
Of the winter-ridden unimaginable.	With the torrid glintings of a noonday sun
Hand in hand	Propel you
On hillslopes dreaming	Into my mind like a mist-clad mountain.
Mind enflamed	Thus am I wandering
In false hope drowning	Drifting like soft rain in shadows
Sadness gripping	Seeking forever the river of words
Coiled thought groping	The dawning of my pentecostal day.

—W. H. Oliver.