Allen Curnow

Collected Poems

Elizabeth Caffin, Terry Sturm

• Publisher: Auckland University Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781775588665
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Allen Curnow (1911–2001) was at the time of his death regarded as one of the greatest of all poets writing in English. For seventy years, from Valley of Decision (1933) to The Bells of Saint Babel's (2001), Curnow's poetry was always on the move – from his early approaches to New Zealand identity and myth to later work concerned with the philosophical encounter between word and world. Curnow also played a major role in New Zealand life as editor, critic, commentator and anthologist, as well as a much-loved writer of light verse under the penname of Whim Wham. In his later years he acquired an impressive international reputation, winning the Commonwealth Prize for Poetry and the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. Throughout his lifetime, Allen Curnow revised, selected and collected his poetry in various ways. For the first time, this collection brings together all of the poems that Curnow collected in his lifetime grouped in their original volumes. The notes reproduce Curnow's comments on individual poems and include relevant editorial guidance. This is the definitive collection of work by New Zealand's most distinguished poet.

ISLAND AND TIME, 1941

. . . The air of their islands is mainly fresh from the sea, and the rainfall abundant from the mountains whereon it condenses, from which, in some places, a violent sirocco results. Their present condition depends on the state of peoples a great distance off, and their communications with these. As yet they have no future of their own; and when at length one confronts them, they shall awake to find where they lie, and what realm it was they so rudely and rashly disturbed.

—D’Arcy Cresswell, Present without Leave

SENTENCE

Tentative the houses

Unhaunted over tombs;

Wind shakes the standing

Timber, shakes rooms

Where cold under rimu

Rafters they discover

The wind wet with change, and

The stranger for lover.

THE UNHISTORIC STORY

Whaling for continents coveted deep in the south

The Dutchman envied the unknown, drew bold

Images of market-place, populous rivermouth,

The Land of Beach ignorant of the value of gold:

Morning in Murderers’ Bay,

Blood drifted away.

It was something different, something

Nobody counted on.

Spider, clever and fragile, Cook showed how

To spring a trap for islands, turning from planets

His measuring mission, showed what the musket could do,

Made his Christmas goose of the wild gannets.

Still as the collier steered

No continent appeared;

It was something different, something

Nobody counted on.

The roving tentacles touched, rested, clutched

Substantial earth, that is, accustomed haven

For the hungry whaler. Some inland, some hutched

Rudely in bays, the shaggy foreshore shaven,

Lusted, preached as they knew;

But as the children grew

It was something different, something

Nobody counted on.

Green slashed with flags, pipeclay and boots in the bush,

Christ in a canoe and the musketed Maori boast;

All a rubble-rattle at Time’s glacial push:

Vogel and Seddon howling empire from an empty coast

A vast ocean laughter

Echoed unheard, and after

All it was different, something

Nobody counted on.

The pilgrim dream pricked by a cold dawn died

Among the chemical farmers, the fresh towns; among

Miners, not husbandmen, who piercing the side

Let the land’s life, found like all who had so long

Bloodily or tenderly striven

To rearrange the given,

It was something different, something

Nobody counted on.

After all re-ordering of old elements

Time trips up all but the humblest of heart

Stumbling after the fire, not in the smoke of events;

For many are called, but many are left at the start,

And whatever islands may be

Under or over the sea,

It is something different, something

Nobody counted on.

THE DANCE

If music may save

Then dance to what you have,

To the wind in the angle

Of an old tin shed

To the whistling of a river

To the creaking of a bed

To the rattle of shingle

To the whisper of sand

To the tractor in the paddock

To a mouth-organ band.

Over the bones of an ear

Goes wind, goes fear.

Will you come, curse

You? Nothing could be worse

Than standing drummi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Valley of Decision, 1933
• Three Poems, 1935
• From Another Argo, 1935
• From A Caxton Miscellany, 1937
• Enemies, 1937
• Not in Narrow Seas, 1939
• From Recent Poems, 1941
• Island and Time, 1941
• Sailing or Drowning, 1943
• Jack without Magic, 1946
• At Dead Low Water, 1949
• Poems 1949–57, 1957
• A Small Room with Large Windows, 1962
• Poems from the 1960s
• Trees, Effigies, Moving Objects, 1972
• An Abominable Temper, 1973
• An Incorrigible Music, 1979
• You Will Know When You Get There, 1982
• The Loop in Lone Kauri Road, 1986
• From Continuum, 1988
• The Game of Tag, from Early Days Yet, 1997
• The Bells of Saint Babel’s, 2001
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Author’s Note from Collected Poems, 1974
• Index of Titles
• Index of First Lines
• Copyright Page
• Footnotes