Say I Do This: Poems 2018-2022
by C. K. Stead
This book is a splendid collection of images of death and dying – not the activity itself (no midwinter earthquakes, no incontinence, no nasty surprises) but an acceptance of death as a fact of life. How much the author believes that is his own business; he has given us a variety of shapes and sizes from which to enjoy drawing our own conclusions.
The collection is in three sections: Home, Away, and ...and Friends. The author roams happily in these territories using haiku, tercets, whatever verse style fits the thought of the day, all of them elegantly done. ‘Poem in October (with shades of Dylan Thomas)’ ends the Home section. The first of its six verses makes it pretty clear what’s going on:
It was my ninetieth year to heaven
woke to my hearing from Hobson Bay neighbourhood
signals of early fruit on grapevine and plum tree
and down on the mud-flat our migrant seabirds returning
while in nearby gardens blackbird and thrush were harassed
from nests in carport and hedge by their thankless offspring,
my morning walk
to take me abroad in a shower of all my days –
Becoming, Being, and then Fading
thirty years each, but the Becoming had been slow
(‘Don’t peak too early’) and overlapped with Being
as Being slid into the Fade. (pp.31-32)
Away immediately explodes into the wider world: Russell Square, Menton, Afghanistan, religion, Judas, national anthems, the death of Orpheus, flirtations and observations, Cavafy, Simón Bolívar. The section’s opening poem – ‘What Next?’ – ends with:
and time to say my goodbyes to Hammersmith ...
It could have been a moment of real regret
and tearful verse – but it brought me to this page
to say ‘OK that’s done, so what comes next?’ –
never mind you know quite well there is no Next,
that next is Nothing. Lean into it, as into a wind. (p. 35)
... and Friends covers even more territory. Names noted in first grab: Kay, John Berryman, Gerald Murnane, Ian, Roger and Wystan, Keri Hulme, Kevin Ireland, the list goes on. This one is ‘For Fleur Adcock’ (p. 62, quoted in full):
You teach us how many poems are hiding
in a small precinct, in the short circuit
of a garden close to a wood –
how many small animals, insects and birds
with their quirks, their colours and behaviours –
never mind memory that other octogenarian
storehouse and stumbling-block
for the sensibility that lives at the last by language
and the gifts of friendship
may die alone leaving the front door open.
And at the end of the day? Gathered on the pier, we are watching a stately swan boat start its trip across the Hauraki Gulf, past the yellow buoy and into the unknown – we may hope to witness a return trip, but this is not for us to plan. In the meantime we are left standing by a warehouse of metaphor, all of it a joy to have on hand in a world where people may run out of oxygen but never of words.
by C. K. Stead
This book is a splendid collection of images of death and dying – not the activity itself (no midwinter earthquakes, no incontinence, no nasty surprises) but an acceptance of death as a fact of life. How much the author believes that is his own business; he has given us a variety of shapes and sizes from which to enjoy drawing our own conclusions.
The collection is in three sections: Home, Away, and ...and Friends. The author roams happily in these territories using haiku, tercets, whatever verse style fits the thought of the day, all of them elegantly done. ‘Poem in October (with shades of Dylan Thomas)’ ends the Home section. The first of its six verses makes it pretty clear what’s going on:
It was my ninetieth year to heaven
woke to my hearing from Hobson Bay neighbourhood
signals of early fruit on grapevine and plum tree
and down on the mud-flat our migrant seabirds returning
while in nearby gardens blackbird and thrush were harassed
from nests in carport and hedge by their thankless offspring,
my morning walk
to take me abroad in a shower of all my days –
Becoming, Being, and then Fading
thirty years each, but the Becoming had been slow
(‘Don’t peak too early’) and overlapped with Being
as Being slid into the Fade. (pp.31-32)
Away immediately explodes into the wider world: Russell Square, Menton, Afghanistan, religion, Judas, national anthems, the death of Orpheus, flirtations and observations, Cavafy, Simón Bolívar. The section’s opening poem – ‘What Next?’ – ends with:
and time to say my goodbyes to Hammersmith ...
It could have been a moment of real regret
and tearful verse – but it brought me to this page
to say ‘OK that’s done, so what comes next?’ –
never mind you know quite well there is no Next,
that next is Nothing. Lean into it, as into a wind. (p. 35)
... and Friends covers even more territory. Names noted in first grab: Kay, John Berryman, Gerald Murnane, Ian, Roger and Wystan, Keri Hulme, Kevin Ireland, the list goes on. This one is ‘For Fleur Adcock’ (p. 62, quoted in full):
You teach us how many poems are hiding
in a small precinct, in the short circuit
of a garden close to a wood –
how many small animals, insects and birds
with their quirks, their colours and behaviours –
never mind memory that other octogenarian
storehouse and stumbling-block
for the sensibility that lives at the last by language
and the gifts of friendship
may die alone leaving the front door open.
And at the end of the day? Gathered on the pier, we are watching a stately swan boat start its trip across the Hauraki Gulf, past the yellow buoy and into the unknown – we may hope to witness a return trip, but this is not for us to plan. In the meantime we are left standing by a warehouse of metaphor, all of it a joy to have on hand in a world where people may run out of oxygen but never of words.
Review by Mary Cresswell
Title: Say I Do This: Poems 2018-2022
Author: C. K. Stead
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 9781776710997
RRP: $35
Available: bookshops
Author: C. K. Stead
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 9781776710997
RRP: $35
Available: bookshops
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