Campana to Montale (2004)

Cover photograph: Michael Dean / Cover design: James Fryer

Kendrick Smithyman. Campana to Montale: Versions from Italian. Edited by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-476-00382-2. Auckland: The Writers Group, 2004. [ii} + 190 pp.

Contents:

Introduction
[For an updated list of poets' biographies, consult the 2010 edition]

• Dino Campana
  

  
  Born in 1885, near Faenza; died of septicaemia at Castel Pulci in 1932. Before being committed in 1918 to the mental hospital where he died, Campana’s life was characterised by compulsive wandering, tormented love affairs, and extreme disdain for the literary establishment. Major work: Canti Orfici (1914).

  1. Old Florence
     Firenze vecchia
  2. from The Evening of the Fair
     La sera di fiera
  3. Campana in an Autumn Garden
     Giardino autunnale
  4. Woman of Genoa
     Donna genovese
  5. The Skylight
     L’invetriata


• Sandro Penna
  

  
  Born in Perugia in 1906; died in Rome in 1977. A somewhat isolated figure in modern Italian poetry, Penna is generally described as the one working-class poet among the intellectuals of the Hermetic school. Major works: Tutte le poesie (1970); Stranezze (1976).

  1. untitled
     ‘Esco dal mio lavoro …’
  2. untitled
     ‘Il treno tarderà …’
  3. The Journey
     Il viaggio
  4. untitled
     ‘Tutto il giorno passai …’
  5. untitled
     ‘Con il cielo coperto …’
  6. Morning
     Mattino
  7. untitled
     ‘L’ombra di una nuvola …’
  8. untitled
     ‘Alfio che un treno Porta …’
  9. untitled
     ‘Voglio credere ancora …’
  10. untitled
      ‘Lungo è il tragitto ...’
  11. untitled
      ‘Viaggiava per la terra …’
  12. In a Small Venetian Square
      La veneta piazzetta
  13. untitled
      ‘Lasciami andare ...’
  14. untitled
      ‘Sulla riva del fiume …’
  15. untitled
      ‘Sole con luna …’
  16. untitled
      ‘Se desolato io cammino ...’
  17. untitled
      ‘Nel chiuso lago …’
  18. Woman in a Tram
      Donna in tram
  19. untitled
      ‘Sul campo aperto …’
  20. untitled
      ‘Imbruna l’aria …’
  21. News of Spring
      Cronache di primavera
  22. untitled
      ‘Forse sull’erba verde …’


• Nelo Risi
  

  
  Born in Milan in 1920. A qualified doctor, but writer by vocation, he spent most of World War II in Russia, and was subsequently interned in Switzerland. His work concerns itself mainly with “the dilemma of the individual in an age of mass-consciousness.” Major works: L’esperienza (1948); Il mondo in una mano (1994).

  1. Mister Risi: The Poet
     Il poeta
  2. Risi’s Tautology
     Tautologia
  3. Risi Says Muses Played Out
     Le muse sono stanche


• Giuseppe Ungaretti
  

  
  Born in Egypt, at Alexandria, in 1888; died in Milan in 1970. He served as an infantryman in World War I, an experience which confirmed him in his vocation as a poet. With Montale and Quasimodo, one of the “big three” of twentieth-century Italian poetry. Major work: Vita d’un uomo (1969).

  1. Quiet / Quietus
     Quiete
  2. Evening
     Sera
  3. Nostalgia
     Nostalgìa
  4. The Vigil of Ungaretti
     Veglia
  5. Agony
     Agonia
  6. Ungaretti’s Drowned Port
     Il Porto sepolto


• Leonardo Sinisgalli
  

  
  Born in Montemurro in 1908; died in Rome in 1981. His background in physics and graphic design led him to formulate a poetry of detached understatement, in opposition to the frenzied aesthetics of his contemporaries. Major works: Cuore (1927); 18 Poesie (1935).

  1. Children Tossing Red Coins
     I fanciulli battono le monete rosse
  2. How Sr Sinisgalli Eyeballed the Muses
     Vidi le Muse


• Alfonso Gatto
  

  
  Born in Salerno in 1909; died in a road accident near Orbetello in 1976. He was imprisoned in Milan in 1934 for opposition to the Fascist regime, and was active in the Resistance during World War II, experiences which informed much of his later poetry. Major works: Poesie (1941); La madre e la morte (1960).

  1. For the Martyrs of Loreto Square
     Per i martiri di Piazzale Loreto


• Vittorio Sereni
  

  
  Born in Luino, Lago Maggiore, in 1913; died in Milan in 1983. Fought as an infantry officer in Greece and Sicily, where he was taken prisoner. His initial adherence to Hermeticism was succeeded by a more realistic approach to war and post-war austerity. Major works: Diario d’Algeria (1947); Stella variabile (1981).

  1. Vittorio Sereni’s First Night out from Athens
     Prima sera d’Atene
  2. Airborne
     Non sa piú nulla
  3. At Six in the Morning
     Le sei del mattino
  4. Vittorio Sereni and His Great Friend
     Il grande amico


• Camillo Sbarbaro
  

  
  Born in Santa Margherita, Liguria, in 1888; died at Spoleto in 1967. Generally seen as an adherent of the turn-of-the-century Crepuscular school, Sbarbaro’s melancholic self-absorption in fact has more in common with later poets of disillusionment such as Montale or Eliot. Major works: Pianissimo (1914); Rimanenze (1956).

  1. Now You Have Come
     Ora che sei venuta
  2. La bambina che va sotto gli alberi
     La bambina che va sotto gli alberi


• Luciano Erba
  

  
  Born in Milan in 1922. Scholar, translator and critic, Erba’s elaborately ironic undercutting of traditional poetic language and attitudes have helped him to build up a biting commentary on post-war Italian values. Major works: Il prato più verde (1970); Il nastro di Moebius (1980).

  1. Luciano Erba in Lombardo-Veneto
     Lombardo-Veneto
  2. Luciano Erba Entertaining Them
     Lo svagato


• Mario Luzi
  

  
  Born in Castello, near Florence, in 1914. An early exponent of the hermetic movement, whose motto “letteratura come vita” [literature as life] dominated Italian literature in the 1930’s, his later work is less liable to assume the capacity of poetry to palliate suffering. Major works: La barca (1935); Tutte le poesie (1979).

  1. Mario Luzi: But Where
     Ma dove
  2. Mario Luzi on Judging
     Il giudice
  3. From (Mario Luzi) One to Another
     L’uno e l’altro


• Giorgio Orelli
  

  
  Born in Airolo in 1921. He studied Italian literature with Gianfranco Contini at Fribourg, then went to teach in Bellinzona, where he has been living since 1945. He is onsidered by many the greatest poet of Italian Switzerland. Major works: Poesie (1953); Sinopie (1977).

  1. The Trout
     La trota


• Elio Pagliarani
  

  
  Born in Viserba, near Rimini, in 1927. Teacher, editor, journalist, Pagliarini’s poetry attempts to replace the conventions of the Romantic lyric with a neo-realist but linguistically complex presentation of the lives of ordinary people. Major works: La ragazza Carla e altre poesie (1962); Lezione di fisica e fecaloro (1968).

  1. from The Girl Carla
     La ragazza Carla


• Lucio Piccolo
  

  
  Born 1903 in Palermo. Died in 1969 at his Sicilian property at Capo d’Orlando. Like his more famous cousin Tomasi di Lampedusa, lived out of the mainstream of Italian cultural life. Major works: Canti barocchi (1956); Plumella (1967).

  1. Lucio Piccolo’s Days
     I giorni


• Eugenio Montale
  

  
  Born in Genoa in 1896; died in Milan in 1981. His poetry, perhaps the most influential in twentieth-century Italian literature, constantly circles back to his childhood on the coast of Liguria. Largely self-educated, he lost his job as an editor in 1938 as a result of anti-fascist opinions, and supported himself afterwards with occasional journalism and translation. Major works: Ossi di seppia (1925); Le occasioni (1939); La bufera ed altro (1956); Satura (1971).

  1. Promenade by the Sea
     Lungomare
  2. untitled
     ‘Portami il girasole ...’
  3. Intermezzo
     Intermezzo
  4. The Customs Officers’ House
     La casa dei doganieri
  5. The Eel
     L’anguilla
  6. untitled
     ‘Un tempo …’
  7. Honour
     L’onore
  8. When I Began to Paint
     ‘Quando cominciai a dipingere …’
  9. After the Rain
     Dopopioggia
  10. Heroism
      L’eroismo
  11. Reading Cavafy
      Leggendo Cavafis
  12. Disguises
      I travestimenti
  13. A Poet
      Un poeta
  14. On The Lake Of Orta
      Sul lago d’Orta
  15. In the Negative
      In negativo
  16. Culture
      La cultura
  17. In a Northern City
      In una città del nord
  18. The Inhuman
      Nel disumano
  19. A Dream, One of Many
      Un sogno, uno dei tanti
  20. That Woman from the Lighthouse
      Quella del faro
  21. From the Other Side
      Dall’altra sponda
  22. On the Beach
      Sulla spiaggia
  23. untitled
      ‘Si aprono venature pericolose ...’
  24. Aspasia
      Aspasia
  25. A Letter Not Sent
      Una lettera che non fu spedita
  26. untitled
      ‘Oltre il breve recinto …’


• Salvatore Quasimodo
  

  
  Born in Modica in 1901; died in Milan in 1968. His Nobel prize for literature in 1959 was awarded mainly for the wartime poems collected in Giorno dopo giorno [Day after day] (1943-46), an advance on the austere Hermeticism of much of his early work. The life of the Sicilian countryside and the classical Mediterranean past are two interests which constantly resurface in his poetry. Major works: Ed è subito sera (1943); Tutte le poesie (1960).

  
  
  from Acque e terre (1920-1929)
  
  
  1. Your Dress is White
     E la tua vesta è bianca
  2. Deadwater
     Acquamorta
  3. Winter in the Old Days
     Antico inverno
  4. Sorrow of Things I Don’t Know
     Dolore di cose che ignoro
  5. The Dead
     I morti
  6. Alley
     Vicolo
  7. Refuge of the Birds of Night
     Rifugio d’uccelli notturni
  
  from Òboe sommerso (1930-1932)
  
  
  8. Sunken Oboe
     Òboe sommerso
  9. To My Land
     Alla mia terra
  10. Word
      Parola
  11. Of a Young Woman Lying Back among Flowers
      Di fresca donna riversa in mezzo ai fiori
  12. Lamentation of a Friar in an Icon
      Lamentazione d’un fraticello d’icona
  13. Without Memory Of Death
      Senza memoria di morte
  14. Prayer to the Rain
      Preghiera alla pioggia
  15. Woods Sleep
      Dormono selve
  16. To Night
      Alla notte
  17. Metamorphoses in the Saint’s Urn
      Metamorfosi nell’urna del santo
  18. Island
      Isola
  19. Where the Dead Stand Open-Eyed
      Dove morti stanno ad occhi aperti
  20. The Angel
      L’angelo
  21. Water Decomposes Dormice
      L’acqua infradicia ghiri
  22. Seed
      Seme
  23. First Day
      Primo giorno
  24. Green Drift
      Verde deriva
  
  from Erato e Apòllion (1932-1936)
  
  
  25. Apollyon’s Song
      Canto di Apòllion
  26. Apollyon
      Apòllion
  27. Dead Heron
      Airone morto
  28. On the Hill of the “Terre Bianche”
      Sui colle delle “Terre Bianche”
  29. In Your Light I am Wrecked
      Al tuo lume naufrago
  30. Insomnia
      Insonnia
  31. Often a Shoreline
      Sovente una riviera
  32. Ulysses’ Isle
      Isola di Ulisse
  33. Salt-Pan in Winter
      Salina d’inverno
  34. Sardinia
      Sardegna
  35. In Light of the Skies
      In luce di cieli
  36. Quarries
      Latomìe
  37. For My Mortal Smell
      Del mio odore di uomo
  38. Stranger City
      Città straniera
  39. In the Feeling of Death
      Nel senso di morte
  
  Nuove Poesie (1936-1942)
  
  
  40. The Magpie Laughs, Black in the Orange Trees
      Ride la gazza, nera sugli aranci
  41. A Street in Agrigentum
      Strada di Agrigentum
  42. The Gentle Hill
      La dolce colline
  43. What are You up to, Shepherd of Air?
      Che vuoi, pastore d’aria?
  44. Before the Statue of Ilaria del Carretto
      Davanti al simulacro d’llaria del Carretto
  45. Now Day Breaks
      Ora che sale il giorno
  46. The Rain is Already with Us
      Già la pioggia è con noi
  47. One Evening, the Snow
      Una sera, la neve
  48. The Piazza Fontana
      Piazza Fontana
  49. The Tall Ship
      L’alto veliero
  50. Elegy for the Dancer Cumani
      Elegos per la danzatrice Cumani
  51. Delphic Woman
      Delfica
  52. Imitation of Joy
      Imitazione della gioia
  53. Moon Horses and Volcanoes
      Cavalli di luna e di vulcani
  54. Once More a Green River
      Ancora un verde fiume
  55. Beach at St Antiochus
      Spiaggia a Sant’Antioco
  56. The Scrawny Flower is Already Flying
      Già vola il fiore maoro
  57. Verging on Puberty
      Inizio di pubertà
  
  Giorno dopo giorno (1947)
  
  
  58. Speaking about Willow Branches
      Alle fronde dei salici
  59. Letter
      Lettera
  60. 19 January 1944
      19 gennaio 1944
  61. Snow
      Neve
  62. Day after Day
      Giorno dopo giorno
  63. Perhaps the Heart
      Forse il cuore
  64. Winter Night
      La notte d’inverno
  65. Milan, August 1943
      Milano, agosto 1943
  66. The Wall
      La muraglia
  67. O My Sweet Animals
      O miei dolci animali
  68. Written Perhaps on a Tomb
      Scritto forse su una tomba
  69. Pilgrim
      A me pellegrino
  70. From the Rock Fortress of Upper Bergamo
      Dalla rocca di Bergamo alta
  71. Beside the Adda
      Presso l’Adda
  72. I Have Heard the Sea Again
      S’ode ancora il mare
  73. Elegy
      Elegia
  74. Of Another Lazarus
      Di un altro Lazzaro
  75. The Crossing
      Il traghetto
  76. Your Silent Foot
      Il tuo piede silenzioso
  77. Man of My Time
      Uomo del mio tempo
  
  from La vita non è sogno (1946-1948)
  
  
  78. Lament for the South
      Lamento per il Sud
  79. Epitaph for Bice Donetti
      Epitaffio per Bice Donetti
  80. Colour of Rain and Iron
      Colore di pioggia e di ferro
  81. Almost a Madrigal
      Quasi un madrigale
  82. Italy is My Country
      Il mio paese è l’Italia
  83. Thànatos Athànatos
      Thànatos Athànatos
  
  from Il falso e vero verde (1949-1955)
  
  
  84. The Dead Guitars
      Le morte chitarre
  85. False and True Green
      Il falso e vero verde
  86. In a Distant City
      In una città lontana
  87. How Long a Night
      Che lunga notte
  88. Beyond the Waves of the Hills
      Al di là delle onde delle colline
  89. Near a Saracen Tower, for His Dead Brother
      Vicina a una torre saracena, per il fratello morto
  90. Laude, 29 April 1945
      Laude, 29 Aprile 1945
  91. To a Poet Not Well Disposed
      A un poeta nemico
  
  from La terra impareggiabile (1955-1958)
  
  
  92. Visible, Invisible
      Visibile, invisibile
  93. The Incomparable Earth
      La terra impareggiabile
  94. Today, the Twenty-First of March
      Oggi ventuno marzo
  95. From Disfigured Nature
      Dalla natura deforme
  96. An Open Arc
      Un arco aperto
  97. A Copper Amphora
      Un’anfora di rame
  98. The Scaliger Tombs
      Le arche scaligere
  99. In This City
      In questa città
  100. Once More about Hell
       Ancora dell’inferno
  101. Almost an Epigram
       Quasi un epigramma
  102. Soldiers Crying in the Night
       I soldati piangono di notte
  103. At Night on the Acropolis
       Di notte sull’Acropoli
  104. Mycenae
       Micene
  105. Following the Alpheus
       Seguendo l’Alfeo
  106. Delphi
       Delfi
  107. Marathon
       Maratona
  108. Minotaur at Knossos
       Minotauro a Cnosso
  109. Eleusis
       Eleusi
  110. To the New Moon
       Alla nuova luna
  111. An Answer
       Una risposta
  112. Another Answer
       Altra risposta
  113. Inscription for the Partisans of Valenza 1957
       Epigrafe per i Partigiani di Valenza
  
  from Dare e avere (1966)
  
  
  114. Debit and Credit
       Dare e avere
  115. Varvàra Alexandrovna
       Varvàra Alexandrovna
  116. Only If Love Stabs You
       Solo che amore ti colpisca
  117. A Night in September
       Una notte di settembre
  118. Along the Isar
       Lungo l’Isar
  119. From the Shores of Lake Balaton
       Dalle rive del Balaton
  120. Tollbridge
       Tollbridge
  121. The Negro Church at Harlem
       La chiesa dei negri ad Harlem
  122. Cape Caliakra
       Capo Caliakra
  123. Silence Does Not Mislead Me
       Il silenzio non m’inganna
  124. Glendalough
       Glendalough
  125. The Bowmen Of Tuscany
       Balestrieri toscani
  126. In Chiswick Cemetery
       Nel cimitero di Chiswick
  127. The Maya at Mérida
       I Maya a Mérida
  128. Love Poem
       Poesia d’amore
  129. I Have Lost Nothing
       Non ho perduto nulla
  130. To Liguria
       Alla Liguria
  131. To Keep The World In Balance
       Basta un giorno a equilibrare il mondo
  132. I Have Flowers and by Night I Call on the Poplars
       Ho fiori e di notte invito i pioppi

Available:

The Writers Group
6A Hastings Rd
Mairangi Bay
North Shore City 0630
Auckland
jack.ross@xtra.co.nz

Reviews & Comments:

1. C. K. Stead. "I know what I’ll be reading this summer." Sunday Star-Times (5/12/04): C8.
   

   
   For poetry I have the new Ken Smithyman, Campana to Montale, Versions from the Italian, just published in a very nice edition by The Writer’s Group (6A Hastings Road, Mairangi Bay, Auckland 1311).



2. Raewyn Alexander. New Zealand Poetry Society Newsletter (February 2005) 4-5.
   

   
   How lovely to decide to understand another country’s poetry whether you know their language or not. Just as a person may step off a plane or boat abroad into unknown territory, Smithyman explored parallel realities on a page. Perhaps through each line, as one of Salvatore Quasimodo’s poems states so eloquently ‘...we seek a sign that will curve over life...’



3. Bernard Gadd. Spin 49 (2005) 77-78.
   

   
   I’m hoping that this collection will revive kiwi poets’ interest in how fascinating, how sensuous, how deeply felt, how thoughtful poetry can be and how it can so satisfyingly combine the intensely personal with the world of people, creatures, forces beyond the individual.



4. Paula Green. brief 32 (2005) 108-12.
   

   
   Smithyman moves across (trans) the Great Divide from the sides (lati) of Italian (well, English versions) to the sides of English, inserting his own signature and his personal ornaments, yet somehow his performance is animated by a strong allegiance to the original, not at all pious but certainly loyal. Smithyman’s versions represent a tender conversation with the Italian poems; like the iconic sunflower, Smithyman’s conversation is flawed yet, more significantly, is vital and transporting.



5. Joe Wyllie. Takahe 55 (2005): 60.
   

   With his formidable literary and language skills Jack Ross appears to have done a superb job of bringing this, supposedly the last of Smithyman’s posthumous works, to publication. For anyone with an interest in language, Campana to Montale is a goldmine, as much, perhaps, for Ross’s contribution as for Smithyman’s.

•

Monkey Miss Her Now (2004)

Cover image: Raewyn Alexander / Design: Jack Ross / Layout: Olivia Macassey

Monkey Miss Her Now & Everything a Teenage Girl Should Know. ISBN 0-476-00182-X. Auckland: Danger Publishing, 2004. 138 pp.

Contents:

Monkey Miss Her Now [Mon coeur mis à nu] (by Jack Ross)

Robinsonade
Adiós DOS
Tango Summer
On Love
Tahiti in 1978
The Great New Zealand Vortex
A Strange Day at the Language School

Everything a Teenage Girl Should Know (by Lorraine West)

The Yellow Room
Bird-girl
The Money Pit
The Red Room
Waiwera
The Blue Room

Blurb:

“Jack Ross continues to create work that is inventive, evocative, droll, and highly distinctive. His new book is a mosaic of scenes and styles that interact in unexpected ways. No reader is going to forget the ‘strange day at the language school,’ the rediscovery of ‘New Zealand Vorticist poet Walter E. Clarke’, or the strange collection of ghosts and 19th century pornographers who populate ‘Everything a Teenage Girl Should Know.’ Once a character has walked out the door, he or she can end up anywhere in space, time or language. Ross’s writing manages to be both adventurous and accessible. He has an uncommon way of mixing humour and melancholy. Any but the most impatient or literal reader should find this a book rich in discoveries.” (Roger Horrocks)

de l'amour
about love

ISBN 0-476-00182-X
danger
publishing
Front cover - acrylic painting by Raewyn Alexander

Abstract:

...

Available:

Raewyn Alexander
Danger Publishing
Bright Communications
bright_com@xtra.co.nz

RRP: $NZ 24.95

[Bruce Mason: The End of the Golden Weather (1959)]

Reviews & Comments:

1. Roger Horrocks. "Launch Speech." The George Fraser Gallery, 24 October 2004.
   

   
   Confronted by a book of this uniqueness and strangeness, there is only one logical course of action, and that’s to buy it. Do we really want to leave the world of books to Whitcoulls and George W. Bush? If Danger Books sell lots of copies today, this publisher will survive to publish another one. Customers will have struck a blow for dangerous books! You will have helped Danger Books in its efforts to become even more dangerous! You will also get a terrific read, so head immediately for that sensuous red cover.



2. Sue Emms. Bravado 3 (2004) 52.
   

   
   There’s a line in ‘Everything a Teenage Girl Should Know’(part two of Monkey) that goes like this: “Releasing her handholds, she lunges wildly in the darkness for the lip of the tunnel”.
   
   Yep, I can identify with that. Reading this book is like a wild lunge in the dark – you just never know what you’re going to find. Sweet moments of poetry and tender prose, or a threesome as witnessed and described (graphically) by a daughter of the household ...
   
   I don’t believe Ross has any interest in having his readers curl up by a fire with his book in their hands, and relaxing. No, Ross wants to make them think, to question what the hell it is they’re reading. Ross wants to wake them out of the fictional dream.



3. Joe Wyllie. Takahe 54 (2005): 63.
   

   
   Outside of literati farm, this sort of thing has a very limited life expectancy ... Much of the material here reads like a workbook, something en route to being much more. And yet, apart from having to negotiate large slabs of Other People’s Art ... it can be highly enjoyable stuff, often rising to a fine spooky edginess. I’d like to read more of his work — once one loses sight of the artifice, he can be very good indeed.



4. Mark Houlahan. "Strange days in the language school." New Zealand Books 15 (2) (June, 2005): 14-15.
   

   
   ... Ross’s wry and quixotic “works” are designed to be slippery, wilfully blending the apparently “autobiographical” with the apparently “fictional”, a mélange of genres precisely framed to forestall any suggestion that a single “authorial” voice was at work ... Nobody else in New Zealand writes quite like Ross, though some of Bill Manhire’s fictions in The New Land are precedents.



5. Scott Hamilton. "After the Golden Weather: Jack Ross and the New New Zealand." brief 32 (2005): 115-19.
   

   
   As postmodern as it is parochial, Monkey Miss Her Now drags a venerable tradition into the strange new worlds of twenty-first century New Zealand.

[Scott Hamilton: Reading the Maps]

Complete Review:
[published by permission]

Scott Hamilton. "After the Golden Weather: Jack Ross and the New New Zealand." brief 32 (2005): 115-19.

Jack Ross is a Shore Boy. The blurb on the back of his fabulously rare first collection, City of Strange Brunettes, tells us that he ‘grew up in Auckland’s East Coast Bays, where he continues to live’, and Monkey Miss Her Now hits the bookshelves at the same time as Golden Weather, an anthology of North Shore writing he has co-edited with Graeme Lay.

The Shore is a strange place. The golden sand, pohutakawas, and island views of those East Coast Bays are still keeping bad watercolourists busy, but the vistas looked prettier thirty or forty years ago. Sargeson and his acolytes colonised a Ruritarian paradise, but for more than three decades the Shore has been a developer’s dream, one of the fastest-growing parts of New Zealand.

Jack’s home suburb, Mairangi Bay, offers an especially sharp lesson in the dialectics of development. Thirty years ago it was a hippy paradise, complete with dirt roads and fields of mushrooms. In the eighties the hippies became yuppies, swapping Values for Lange-Labour, and potholed right-of-ways for smooth concrete drives. Today’s boom town is nearby Albany, where streets lined with half-built houses make for a boy racer’s paradise at night.

It is possible to argue that, in the very extremity of the juxtapositions it now presents, the North Shore exemplifies changes seen across New Zealand society over recent decades. In his introduction to the poetry section of Golden Weather, Jack talks about the ‘two sides’ of the Shore – the fragments left over from a ‘golden, relaxed, Mediterranean’ age, and the ‘coarseness’ and ‘realism’ of the new ‘mortgaged suburbs of modern homes’. Most of the writers in Golden Weather are noticeably keener on the Old Shore – at least, when choosing their subject matter, they prefer baches and fresh-caught snapper to boy racers and concrete drives. Frank Sargeson, the godfather of them all, waged a famously stubborn rearguard action against the New Shore, refusing to abandon his Takapuna bach to an advancing motorway.

Today Sargeson’s home stands as a sort of monument to the Old North Shore, mocked by the hiss and roar of a nearby on-ramp. Many of the stories and poems in Golden Weather make a similar stand. In the anthology’s first piece of prose, for instance, Michael King grits his teeth and turns his back on the ‘nascent urban centre’ of Browns Bay, with its ‘seven banks and seven real estate agents’, and comforts himself with the indifference of the sea. It seems a remarkably nihilistic gesture, from a man so identified with a feel-good flavour of liberal nationalism, until one realises that the whole aesthetic of the Defiant Old North Shore – of snapper caught beside rush-hour traffic, and remembered baches blotting out beachfront apartments – is predicated upon a fear and loathing of most of the real inhabitants of the New North Shore.

I wish that Jack and Graeme had thrown a few of the stories in Jack’s book into their anthology, because Monkey Miss Her Now is a determined attempt to come to grips with the place Michael King rejected. Jack’s unusual achievement is to treat the subject matter of this ‘new’, if not improved, New Zealand – language schools, suburban swing parties, boy racers, text message pests, and the rest – using a style and sensibility that hark back to the ‘classical’ New Zealand literary tradition that the best writers of the Old Shore did so much to establish. Sargeson has left his bach-fortress, forded that motorway off-ramp, and discovered a strange new world.

Admittedly, there are no concrete drives or boy racers in ‘Robinsonade’, the first story in Monkey Miss Her Now. Jack offers us, instead, a resourceful castaway, on a well-resourced tropical isle – building blocks, one might think, for a classical adventure story. On Jack’s isle, though, nothing happens. The tokens of Crusoe’s industrious self-improvement – the raft, the vegetable plot, the windmill, the hut – are judged ‘singularly futile and pointless’, and the closest we get to Man Friday is a rather diffident ghost. Like Valery and Wittgenstein before him, Jack has created his Crusoe not to justify a plot, but dramatise certain traits of the human beings who live inside a real society. Crusoe is isolated in the way that a scientist’s sample is isolated. His sense of boredom and futility is all the more affecting, because it seems to have its source in something deeper than mere loneliness. Reading this Crusoe’s response to a random epistle from the offshore world, we sense that his isolation is existential, as much as geographical:

This morning, walking on the beach, I found a little glass bottle...As I had hoped it contained a note...Why did it anger me so much, I wonder? Was it the idea that of all the people in the world, I should pick up a portion of this one’s private correspondence? The triviality, the banality of it all! Why should anyone even dream of writing such a letter?

In the first volume of Edward Upward’s trilogy The Spiral Ascent, the protagonist leaves his job and settles on the Isle of Wight, determined to live the perfect ‘poetic life’ in seclusion. All too soon, though, he becomes tormented by a feeling of futility, and decides to jump off one of the island’s many cliffs. Only a decision to join the Communist Party and live a ‘meaningful’ (read: political) life keeps Upward’s hero in one piece. Jack’s Crusoe actually makes it off his cliff, but his ‘tentative crab-like tumble’ suggests that ‘my body, the house of my life’ has ‘decided to stay’. Jack’s resolution is less dramatic than Upward’s: ‘back to the kelp beds, I suppose’ is as much as he seems able to manage. This sort of dour stoicism belongs, of course, to Sargeson’s isolated anti-heroes.

‘Robinsade’ is a good introduction to Monkey Miss Her Now: its faux-exotic, almost abstract setting dramatises themes that will appear in more quotidian surroundings through the rest of the book. In the second story, 'ADIOS DOS', the theme of alienation relocates to an English language school, where a bereaved teacher’s exact observations of his surroundings only dramatise his emotional isolation. Jack weaves students’ exercises into his text with a sensitivity that recalls Michael Henderson’s anti-Vietnam war masterpiece Log of a Superfluous Son:

He is very kindly and friendly. Everyday he wears difference quite nice dress. He always wear a pair of nice glass. I think he is more tolerant person. Sometimes he likes sociable, but a lot of time he keeps his life alone. He is very knowledge.

Again and again, the protagonist of ADIOS DOS returns to a ravine that seems to symbolise his own wound. But the hole that Jack digs can’t offer the succour his hero requires:

[I]t was no friend of his. It was no friend of anyone’s. It was just a big black hole – a meaningless feature of the landscape.

Ultimately, ‘furniture, clothes, books’ and ‘a new living room purged of negative associations’ seem a better bet. (Perhaps some Walpole novels would look good on those shelves?) Jack’s theme may come straight from Sargeson, but the formal structure of 'ADIOS DOS' is far removed from the austere manner of Takapuna’s last horticulturalist. A better reference point is Sargeson’s one-time acolyte, Maurice Duggan, who lived for many years in Forest Hill, just a gentle stroll from Mairangi Bay. Written through the mists of morphine in the summer of 1974, Duggan’s late, great story ‘The Magsman Miscellany’ reads like a rough blueprint for the episodic, allusive, yet compulsively observant style of Monkey Miss Her Now.

The three pieces which follow ADIOS DOS – ‘Tango Summer’, ‘On Love’, and ‘Tahiti’ – push Duggan’s form to breaking point, coming close at times to collage. ‘Summer Tango’ and ‘On Love’ organise their fragments with overarching themes, while ‘Tahiti’ appears autobiographical. These stories’ cut and paste method helps Jack to make extensive use of what was once rather delicately called ‘vernacular language’.

But Jack’s dirty language often lies down beside highfalutin’ registers and references – the sort of stuff that’d make Jake Heke blush – so that we are aware of the author’s distance from his subjects. Is anyone else reminded of Sargeson, who sat alone in a corner of a 1930s pub, scribbling down and annotating ‘authentic working class dialogue’?

‘On Love’ and ‘Tango Summer’ are clever, and frequently entertaining, but they seem a retreat from the seriousness of ‘ADIOS DOS’. Is the real impetus for Jack’s writing being disguised here? Is the author valourising rather than exploring his alienation? In some of his other books Jack has given himself a sort of bumbling, pedantic ‘Doctor Watson’ persona, in an effort to dramatise the distance he feels from his subject matter. In Chantal’s Book, the cycle of poems issued last year by HeadworX, a pedantic narrator manages to erase the real personality of his girlfriend and ostensible subject by continually taking his eye off her to scribble learned and irrelevant notes. In the novel Nights with Giordano Bruno, Doctor Watson makes a rather awkward visit to Showgirls. The same comic persona can be found in ‘On Love’, and I am not sure whether he dramatises or trivialises the author’s alienation:

“We’re all hairdressers” they say, and start to rattle off names. There are five girls and one boy (his name you do catch). They’re all dressed alike, in black, and are probably around seventeen or eighteen, from what you can judge.

“Hey driver man, do you have a stereo?” You do, and turn it on to Classic Hits, indulging itself with Abba revivalism.

“Mind if we change the channel?” You don’t, particularly.

The most important text in Monkey Miss Her Now is ‘A Strange Day at the Language School’, which won Jack second place in Landfall’s 2002 essay competition. Jack’s dry observations of an outpost of Auckland’s flagship ‘postmodern industry’ are interrupted by the sudden death of one of his students, In-Jae Ra. I remember reading Michael Schmidt condemn Dylan Thomas’s ‘A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London’ for burying the real human being who was its ostensible subject under an avalanche of resonant obscurities, rhetorical sleights of hand:

Never until the mankind making
Bird beast and flower
Fathering and all humbling darkness
Tells with silence the last light breaking
And the still hour
Is come of the sea tumbling in harness

And I must enter again the round
Zion of the water bead
And the synagogue of the ear of corn
Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound
Or sow my salt seed
In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn

The majesty and burning of the child’s death

Reading these lines, I am lost in a verbal facility that exploits and obscures the tragedy Schmidt wants to remember. ‘A Strange Day’ takes a stand against such dishonesty, as Jack remains attentive to his own confusion, and to the limits of his empathy for a student he knew only fleetingly and superficially. He has no truck with easy eloquence, let alone easy answers:

It was a moment which called for something extraordinary from each of us, and afterwards it was impossible to know how well one had performed. Simple human gestures were what was required, yet they didn’t seem enough. The gulf between us and the students, between them and poor In-Jae, could not be bridged.

With its radical reticence, ‘A Strange Day’ shows Jack’s debt to the earlier generations of Shore Boys who occupy such canonical places in our literature. The ghost of Sargeson’s deeply feeling yet confused and inarticulate protagonists haunts Jack’s language school.

A highlight of the launch party for Monkey Miss Her Now was a generous and amusing talk by Roger Horrocks, who located Jack’s scribblings in the ‘exciting alt. lit tradition of local writing’. Horrocks’ opposition of ‘alt. lit’ to ‘mainstream literature’ took me back to Alan Loney’s theory of two warring and irreconcilable traditions of New Zealand writing – the one formally innovative, and influenced by American modernism and postmodernism, and the other local, parochial, and formally conservative. More than any other living writer, Jack Ross shows us the inadequacy of Loney’s schema. As postmodern as it is parochial, Monkey Miss Her Now drags a venerable tradition into the strange new worlds of twenty-first century New Zealand.

•

Golden Weather (2004)

Cover illustration: Tony Ogle / Cover design: Kate Greenaway

Golden Weather: North Shore Writers Past and Present. Poems edited by Jack Ross / Prose edited by Graeme Lay. ISBN 0-908561-96-2. Auckland: Cape Catley, 2004. 244 pp.

Contents:

• Graeme Lay – Golden Weather: Prose Preface
• Jack Ross – Pure Enterprise: The Poetry of the North Shore

Baches

• Mary Stanley – Householder
• D’Arcy Cresswell – from Dear Lady Ginger
• –– from The Forest
• Stu Bagby – The Writing Holiday

Michael King - The Harmony of the Sea

Castor Bay

• Robin Hyde – from At Castor Bay
• –– The Verb
• Sam Hunt – At Castor Bay
• Wystan Curnow – from Castor Bay

Janet Frame - from An Angel at my Table

Rangitoto

• Charles Brasch – from Indirections
• –– A View of Rangitoto
• Keith Sinclair – The Bomb is Made

Jean Bartlett - Rahopara Pa

Maurice Duggan - A Small Story

Peter. A. Smith - from 1951

Devonport

• Lee Dowrick – remember
• A. R. D. Fairburn – Poem on the Advantages of Living at the Remuera End of the North Shore
• Kevin Ireland – Anzac Day, Devonport

Graeme Lay - The Island

Noel Virtue - from The Transfiguration of Martha Friend

Boats

• Mark Richards – Heading Home
• Jacqueline Crompton Ottaway – ghost ships beckon
• Jan Kemp – Sailing boats
• Michele Leggott – Bean Rock & Mr Whistler

Frank Sargeson - from More Than Enough

Sargeson

• Maurice Duggan – Calling on F. S. (1945)
• Riemke Ensing – lighthouse
• Janet Charman – Courtney Love and ‘The Hole That Jack Dug’
• Kevin Ireland – Ash Tuesday

Frank Sargeson - A Great Day

Fairburn

• A. R. D. Fairburn – The Cave
• A. R. D. Fairburn – La Belle Dame Sans Merci

A. R. D. Fairburn - Letters

Mason

• R. A. K. Mason – Old Memories of Earth
• R. A. K. Mason – Sonnet to MacArthur’s Eyes
• A. R. D. Fairburn – On R. A. K. Mason
• Hone Tuwhare – Ron Mason

Shonagh Koea - from Yet Another Ghastly Christmas

The Ferry

• C. K. Stead – 1932 The Student
• Michele Leggott – omphalos
• –– from Girls With Roses Being Carried On Tables To The Inn
• Bob Orr – Rimbaud’s Devonport Ferry
• Kendrick Smithyman – Mr Moriarty and the Ferry

Kevin Ireland - My Late Father

Growing Up

• Stu Bagby – First Dance
• Nick Williamson – Broken Light
• Alice Hooton – Going Spare
• Jacqueline Crompton Ottaway – At the top of the stairs

Barbara Anderson - from All the Nice Girls

Inhabitants

• Kevin Ireland – An ode to social members
• Alistair Paterson – from Qu’appelle
• Tony Green – Walking: 14 May 2002
• Barry Southam – An Anzac Town like Ours

Chad Taylor - from Electric

Commuters

• Kendrick Smithyman – About Setting a Jar on a Hill
• Jack Ross – Antipodes
• Michele Leggott – Keeping Warm

C. K. Stead - from All Visitors Ashore

Poets

• James K. Baxter – Ode to Auckland
• Frank McKay – from The Life of James K. Baxter
• Allen Curnow – A Small Room with Large Windows
• Kendrick Smithyman – If I Stepped Outside, in May ‘93
• C. K. Stead – K.S. (1922-95)

Maurice Gee - from In My Father’s Den

Beaches

• Nick Williamson – Home Movie
• Sonja Yelich – narrow neck from the boat ramp
• Kevin Ireland – Pity about the Gulls

Anna Kavan - Two New Zealand Pieces

Exiles

• Maurice Duggan – Letter from Gaul
• Kendrick Smithyman – Near Mahurangi
• Richard von Sturmer – from Sentient Dreams, 1, 2 & 5
• Lee Dowrick – somewhere else
• Karl Wolfskehl – Vor Ausfahrt, die Alten
• [trans J. R.] – Before Exodus: The Elders

Christine Cole Catley - Kindness, Death and Hope

Requiems

• A. R. D. Fairburn – Full Fathom Five
• Sam Hunt – My Father Today
• Wensley Willcox – Conversation with my Mother
• Jack Ross – Except Once

Bruce Mason - from The End of the Golden Weather

Epilogue

• Kendrick Smithyman – Just One April Morning by the Channel

Alphabetical List of Contributors

Samples:

Cape Catley Books

Available:

Christine Cole Catley
Cape Catley Ltd
Ngataringa Rd
PO Box 32-622
Devonport
North Shore City
Auckland
cape.catley@xtra.co.nz
www.capecatleybooks.co.nz

RRP: $NZ 34.99

Reviews & Comments:

1. Warwick Rogers. North & South 225 (December 2004): 109.
   

   
   Prose editor Graeme Lay, characterises the Shore as “Auckland’s Left Bank”. So, choosing whose work to include and whose to leave out would have been quite a task, but he has chosen well.
   
   The same can’t be said for the book’s poetry editor, Jack Ross of Massey University’s Albany campus. Call me a philistine if you like — and many of you will — but to me most of the poems in this collection, particularly those of the young contemporary poets, are utterly incomprehensible.



2. Scott Hamilton. "After the Golden Weather: Jack Ross and the New New Zealand." brief 32 (2005): 115-19.
   

   
   I wish that Jack and Graeme had thrown a few of the stories in Jack’s book into their anthology, because Monkey Miss Her Now is a determined attempt to come to grips with the place Michael King rejected. Jack’s unusual achievement is to treat the subject matter of this ‘new’, if not improved, New Zealand – language schools, suburban swing parties, boy racers, text message pests, and the rest – using a style and sensibility that hark back to the ‘classical’ New Zealand literary tradition that the best writers of the Old Shore did so much to establish.

Launch of Golden Weather Anthology in Takapuna Library (19 September, 2004)

[Back Row (l-to-r): Shonagh Koea / Alistair Paterson / Stu Bagby / Lee Dowrick / Jan Kemp / Tony Green / C. K. Stead / Bust of Frank Sargeson / Wensley Willcox / Graeme Lay / Kevin Ireland
Front Row (l-to-r): Christine Cole Catley / Jack Ross / Jean Bartlett / Alice Hooton / Jacqueline Crompton Ottaway / Riemke Ensing]

•

Edited: Books

[photograph: Jennifer Little]

Contents:

1. Jan Kemp. Dancing Heart: New and Selected Poems 1968–2024. Edited by Jack Ross. ISBN 978-3-00-083163-8. Kronberg im Taunus, Germany: Tranzlit, 2025. 172 pp.





2. Mike Johnson. Selected Poems 1977-2022. Edited with an Introduction by Jack Ross. ISBN 978-1-991083-00-5. 99% Press. Auckland: Lasavia Publishing Ltd., 2023. 206 pp.







3. Leicester Kyle. Letters to a Psychiatrist. Afterword by Jack Ross. ISBN 978-0-473-41327-9. Paper Table Novellas, 1. Auckland: Paper Table, 2017. iv + 87 pp.







4. Leicester Kyle. The Millerton Sequences. Edited by Jack Ross. Poem by David Howard. ISBN 978-0-473-18880-1. Pokeno, Auckland: Atuanui Press, 2014. 140 pp.





5. Leicester Kyle. Koroneho: Joyful News Out Of The New Found World. Edited with an Introduction by Jack Ross. Preface by Ian St George. ISBN 978-0-9876604-0-4. Auckland: The Leicester Kyle Literary Estate / Wellington: The Colenso Society, 2011. ii + 110 pp.





6. 11 Views of Auckland. Edited by Jack Ross & Grant Duncan. Preface by Jack Ross. Social and Cultural Studies, 10. ISSN 1175-7132. Albany: Massey University, 2010. ii + 210 pp.





7. New New Zealand Poets in Performance. Edited by Jack Ross. Poems selected by Jack Ross and Jan Kemp. ISBN 978 1 86940 4093. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2008. Text + 2 CDs. xiv + 146 pp.





8. Home & Away: Life Writing 3. ISBN 978-0-473-13539-3. Massey University: School of Social and Cultural Studies, 2008. ii + 156 pp.





9. Contemporary New Zealand Poets in Performance. Edited by Jack Ross and Jan Kemp. ISBN 978 1 86940 395 9. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2007. Text + 2 CDs. xiv + 162 pp.





10. Myth of the 21st Century: An Anthology of New Fiction. Edited by Tina Shaw & Jack Ross. ISBN 0-7900-1098-4. Auckland: Reed Publishing (NZ) Ltd, 2006. 137 pp.





11. Classic New Zealand Poets in Performance. Edited by Jack Ross. Poems selected by Jack Ross and Jan Kemp. ISBN 1-86940-367-3. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2006. Text + 2 CDs. xiv + 146 pp.





12. Where Will Massey Take You? Life Writing 2. ISBN 0-473-09551-3. Massey University: School of Social and Cultural Studies, 2005. viii + 155 pp.





13. Kendrick Smithyman. Campana to Montale: Versions from Italian. Edited with an Introduction by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-476-00382-2. Auckland: The Writers Group, 2004. [ii] + 190 pp.
    
    
    
    
    • Kendrick Smithyman. Campana to Montale: Versions from Italian. 2004. Edited by Jack Ross & Marco Sonzogni. Introduction by Marco Sonzogni. Essay by Jack Ross. ISBN-13: 978-88-7536-264-5. Transference Series. Ed. Erminia Passannanti. Novi Ligure: Edizioni Joker, 2010. 244 pp.




14. Golden Weather: North Shore Writers Past and Present. Poems edited by Jack Ross / Prose edited by Graeme Lay. ISBN 0-908561-96-2. Auckland: Cape Catley, 2004. 244 pp.





15. [your name here]: Life Writing. ISBN 0-473-09551-3. Massey University: School of Social and Cultural Studies, 2003. x + 140 pp.

•

Books

[Launch poster: James Fryer]

Contents:

1. Tesseract. Illustrated by Scarlett Robinson-Kean. ISBN 978-0-473-78266-5. Auckland: Paper Table, 2026. 110 pp.







2. Haunts. ISBN 978-1-991083-17-3. 99% Press. Auckland: Lasavia Publishing, 2024. 202 pp.







3. The Oceanic Feeling. Drawings by Katharina Jaeger. Afterword by Bronwyn Lloyd. ISBN 978-0-473-55801-7. Auckland: Salt & Greyboy Press, 2021. 72 pp.







4. Ghost Stories. ISBN 978-0-9951165-5-9. 99% Press. Auckland: Lasavia Publishing, 2019. 140 pp.







5. The Annotated Tree Worship. Auckland: Paper Table, 2017:
   • Draft Research Portfolio. ISBN 978-0-473-41328-6. Paper Table Novellas, 2 (i). iv + 88 pp.
   • List of Topoi. ISBN 978-0-473-41329-3. Paper Table Novellas, 2 (ii). iv + 94 pp.







6. A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7. Wellington: HeadworX, 2014. ii + 190 pp.







7. Celanie: Poems & Drawings after Paul Celan. Poems by Jack Ross & Drawings by Emma Smith, with an Afterword by Bronwyn Lloyd. ISBN: 978-0-473-22484-4. Pania Samplers, 3. Auckland: Pania Press, 2012. 168 pp.





8. Kingdom of Alt. Short Stories and a Novella by Jack Ross. ISBN 978-1-877441-15-8. Auckland: Titus Books, 2010. [iv] + 240 pp.





9. EMO. A Novel by Jack Ross. ISBN 978-1-877441-07-3. Auckland: Titus Books, 2008. [vi] + 258 pp.





10. To Terezín. Travelogue by Jack Ross, with an Afterword by Martin Edmond. Social and Cultural Studies, 8. ISSN 1175-7132. Auckland: Massey University, 2007. ii + 90 pp.





11. The Imaginary Museum of Atlantis. A Novel by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-9582586-8-6 . Auckland: Titus Books, 2006. 164 pp.





12. Trouble in Mind. A Novella by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-9582586-1-9. Auckland: Titus Books, 2005. [ii] + 102 pp.





13. Monkey Miss Her Now & Everything a Teenage Girl Should Know. Short Stories by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-476-00182-X. Auckland: Danger Publishing, 2004. 138 pp.





14. Chantal’s Book. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-08744-8. Wellington: HeadworX, 2002. 112 pp.





15. Nights with Giordano Bruno. A Novel by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-9582225-0-9. Wellington: Bumper Books, 2000. [xii] + 224.





16. City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9. Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998. 98 pp.

•