Mortality, memory and Tarot cards: What’s with our new poetry collections?

By Vincent O’Sullivan

(Te Herenga Waka University Press, $30)

New Zealand was deprived of a great poet in April, when Vincent O’Sullivan died, aged 86. Fortunately, he left one last collection of poetry, released posthumously. Still Is has a title that suggests the defiance of a man who accepts the faulty world as it is but will still battle on. He is jocular about the approach of death in the poems Nothing too serious, mind you and For the obituarist.As in most of O’Sullivan’s collections, there is no particular order in which poems are presented, all 90 of them. He addresses ageing, physical decay and the way memories can distort the truth; a few rough times when he was a kid in old Ponsonby; and of course, love.

Then there is an address to disorderly states of mind.The poem extras is halfway between theatre and a dream when under dental anaesthetic. O’Sullivan is at his most combative when he has a go at our media in So at least we know (the evening news) and Life on air (radio). But he is most humane when he reminds us that we human beings are animals after all. To accept we are human is an outstanding poem, in which he salutes respectfully our ancestors – apes, tree dwellers, cave people.His approach is often fun, but always thoughtful.

By CK Stead

(Auckland University Press, $24.99, released on July 11)

Now in his 92nd year, Karl Stead last year suffered the death of Kay, his wife of 70 years. In the Half Light of a Dying Day is presented in two halves. The first, called The Clodian Songbook [Continued], deals with themes Stead has visited before. He takes on the persona of the Roman poet Catullus, chafing at the fickleness of the unfaithful Clodia. In his Catullus mask, Stead also deals with contemporaries and the present. Kevin Ireland is addressed as the Roman poet Licinius, and welcomed as a comrade. “Hemi” (James K Baxter) is chastised as flashy and not putting his talents to “better use”. Stead’s cutting wit is abundant.

The real heart of his collection is the second half, Catullus and Kezia, Kezia clearly representing Kay. Stead carefully charts the physical decline in her health. First, as elderly people they know there is “no more travel for them … / … old age has taught them / to love what they have / this green enclave where flowers and fruit flourish”. At home, they do some serious thinking. She chose to stay with him, despite all their ups and downs. As her pain becomes more intense, he tries to ease her by rubbing her back “she panting, shivering, sweating / seeming so small so shrunken and depleted / and still so loved”. And finally comes the moment when Kay dies beside Karl in their bed. It is a gruelling chronicle. There follow some happy memories of their life together. Catullus and Kezia is heartfelt and moving, and would have presented a great challenge for the poet to write.

By Majella Cullinane

(Otago University Press, $30)