The Quick and the Dead: The Breadth of Australia's Poetry in the Last Decade

The Quick and the Dead: The Breadth of Australia's Poetry in the Last Decade DAVID HEADON I In a foreword to a selection of his poems appearing in Alexander Craig's 1971 anthology Twelve Poets, Bruce Dawe wrote: The time may soon come when most Australian writers (and especially poets) may feel, from the outset, confidence in tackling in their individual ways the universal problems of man's relationship to society, widi all that that entails, as well as the dramatic analysis of his inward odyssey in language. This confidence, which Dawe indicates as a definite short-term possibility , has not yet arrived in Australian poetry. But tfianks to die genuinely exciting work of the four poets here in question—and Dawe himself is one—die present Australian poetry map reflects a widening range of experiment, and has a depdi of insight which, in die early Sixties, could not have been anticipated. Others could have been chosen, but I feel die poetry of Charles Buckmaster, Michael Dransfield, Bruce Dawe, and Les Murray effectively gauges die increased maturity of Australian poetry in die last decade—die freshest, and certainly die most innovative in our comparatively short history. Not surprisingly, this sophistication has come about dirough die recognition, by many of die younger poets, of the need to escape die entrenched conservatism and restrictive nationalism of die mainstream of Australian verse since die Twenties, and the need to carve out a more David Hcadon is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of BritishColumbia. An earlier version of this paper was read at the Commonwealth Literature sectionat the 1977 RMMLA meeting in Las Vegas. ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW9} committed personal role and sense of poetic quest. Aggressively confronted by overseas models, particularly American, Australian poets in die late Fifties and Sixties were forced to reevaluate dieir credentials. Experiment and change were inevitable. The poetry which flourished for so many years—conventional subjects, formal, stupefied lines and predictable Georgian rhyming—finally gave ground widi nodiing short of revolutionary results. II The comparatively recent discovery by a number of Australian poets of dieir affinity of temperament (environment and history) widi a number of contemporary and recent-generation American poets has significantly contributed to die widened scope of die local scene. In fact, fickle poetic fashion in Australia in die last ten years has busily been poring over an unexpectedly large variety of foreign-produced work. There was, after all, much catching up to do after James McAuley and Harold Stewart so successfully dashed die modernist cause some twenty years previously widi die infamous poems of one Ernest Malley. The effect on Australian poets like Bruce Beaver, Vivian Smidi, and David Malouf of die Confessional mode practiced by poets such as Robert Lowell has been superseded by die vibrations from Black Mountain . In die last year or so, Robert Creeley and Robert Duncan visited Australia; consequendy die star of Olson's company is currently in the ascendant. Established magazines such as New Poetry, Meanjin and Westerly are regularly printing dieir poetry. The sheer weight of American verse is making itself felt, but to speak of a direct and widespread influence is, at die present time, simply to distort die situation. Widi this in mind, four points of specific relevance need stating, if only to get my biases clear : first, die impetus of die American connection to this point has been almost entirely beneficial. The challenges categorically issued by die Poundian adherents of Kung's Canto 53 catchcry "Make It New" were just the tonic needed for an Australian poetry which, at die beginning of die Sixties, was still limited by die parochial confines of the Australian poetic tradition, not The poetic tradition emphasized by die moderns, which views die contemporary 94AUSTRALIA'S POETRY poet as inheritor of All diat has gone before him. The climate unfortunately prevailing for die budding poet in Fifties Australia was, in Chris Wallace-Crabbe's phrase, one of "formalism and Bogartian toughness." Secondly, it is widely accepted diat die most stimulating contributions to modern poetry are diose of U.S. poets such as Duncan, Creeley, Zukofsky, Snyder, Ginsberg, Rodienberg, Dorn, Oppen, McClure and Reznikoff, to name only some of die...