Wednesday, May 4, 2011

New Zealand's best unknown poet?

Last week I stumbled upon something extraordinary in the Ellerslie Book Exchange. This fine establishment always rewards the patient browser, and as I scanned the NZ poetry shelf my eye was drawn to a thin duodecimo volume clad in worn red leather. My first thought was that I was in the presence of an errant copy of the little red book, Quotations from Chairman Mao. As a fumbling undergraduate I had bought this atrocity because I was under the impression that reading it was vital if one wanted to know what the “C” word was all about. My faith in the book’s seminality was so strong that I didn’t even flick through it before purchase, and it was only on dipping into it at home that I realized that it had been written by a man who made Baron Munchausen look like Honest Abe. Here, for example, is Mao on the masses:

To link oneself with the masses, one must act in accordance with the needs and wishes of the masses . . . It often happens that objectively the masses need a certain change, but subjectively they are not yet conscious of the need, not yet willing or determined to make the change. In such cases, we should wait patiently . . .

                              “The United Front in Cultural Work” (30 October 1944)

Mao presumably felt he was acting in accordance with the needs and wishes of the masses when he orchestrated the deaths of roughly 55 million of them during his regime. Wait patiently indeed.

My historical relations with little red books not being what you might call cordial, it was with some relief that I found that the diminutive spine of the one in front of me read “I.A.M. POEMS”. And indeed it was.

“I.A.M.”, I learned upon opening the volume, stood for Imogen Amelia Marsh. The book was a collection of her poetry and had been printed in Hawera in 1951. No publisher was given and the printing and binding had a very bespoke look about them. Underneath the year, set in smaller type, appeared “3 of 10”, which convinced me that the book in my hands was one of an edition of only ten, and that it had been privately printed and bound, possibly at the instigation of I.A.M. herself.

How did this 60-year-old little-read red book from Hawera come to be in the Ellerslie Book Exchange? Who was I.A.M.? What was her poetry like? Of these questions only the last seemed to be in any way immediately answerable, and so I licked the old index finger, turned over the title page, and was confronted with this:

"The End of Nothing"

The leaves fell like so many lead balloons
That autumn; his crime of the century,
His litany of lies, left truth marooned
Like the naked trees in a leafy sea.
She didn’t need spring to feel creative,
She made a papier-mâché effigy,
His happy smiling face looked elated
Atop a pyre of leaves. The liturgy
Of his poems she then glued to his skin.
The flames rose, destroying his lying art,
His words changed into confessions of sin,
The sweated nothings grunted to his tart.
She left him forever, to die and smoulder;
A leaf landed unfelt on her cold shoulder.

It was in sonnet form, yes, but it was a sort of anti-sonnet. Sonnets of course were originally written by a man to a woman and sang the praises of the addressee in the hope that they she would admit the man into her favour, as it were.

I will not record any more of my own reactions to “The End of Nothing” at this juncture. Instead, I’d like to ask my sextet of loyal readers what they think of the poem. I am currently pursuing all avenues in an effort to find out more about I.A.M., and will of course post any details as they come to hand. Should “The End of Nothing” be considered the start of something by you, dear readers, more of I.A.M.’s poetry will follow. 

11 comments:

  1. I.A.M. what I.A.M.

    Note the relatively contemporary allusions to the other little red book you mention. MAROONed? The flames of the pyre, even the lead-balloon leaves recalling the smaller lead spheroids central to Mao's means...

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  2. A positive banquet for thought there, Nads. My lines of inquiry have proliferated thanks to your keener-than-mustard (a yellow peril?) observations!

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  3. EREBUS, EVEREST & ETNA

    Did Justice Mahon plagiarise the "litany of lies" line from I.A.M. in his Erebus Report?

    That aside aside, I agree this is an exciting discovery of what might turn out to be the country's premier poetic talent - akin in its significance to finding out that Mallory indeed ascended Everest before Hillary.

    Quibble: how does a leaf "smoulder" unless it has been lit? Like leaves falling on Etna? Or maybe she meant "moulder"?

    Davorder (not anon.)

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  4. @Davorder: I don't get your quibble. In line 8 there's a pyre and in line 10 there are flames - why shouldn't things smoulder after that? Also, what is "left to smoulder" is not a leaf but the effigy with poems glued to it. Come to think of it, I don't get your Everest analogy either. If I.A.M. is akin to Mallory, then who is the Hillary of New Zealand poetry? I can't think of any obvious candidates.
    @Gerald: Don't be put off by the petty quibbling of half-literate mountaineers. You've struck gold this time - keep it coming!
    U.R.

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  5. More Imogen please!

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  6. Dear Gerald,

    One of your ‘loyal sextet’ forwarded your blog to me and I admit to having been a bit sceptical about the authenticity of I.A.M.’s poem after the first reading. One phrase – “lead balloon” – in particular struck me as suspicious. Had the expression been coined in 1951? I’m happy to say that a quick web search proved that it was. The phrase was first recorded in May 1947, in a Kansas newspaper called the Atchison Daily Globe:

    ‘But occasionally a column or comic strip will “go over” like a V-1 rocket in one community and, for inexplicable reasons, a lead balloon in another.’

    But with I.A.M.’s poems being published only four years after the phrase entered the language, other questions arise. Fifty years ago phrases and expressions popular in one area of the English-speaking world took much longer to appear in other areas than they do today. Perhaps I.A.M. encountered 'lead balloon' in the United States? Perhaps she had only recently emigrated to Hawera when her poems were printed? Or had she married an American stationed in NZ during WW2? The plot thickens!

    Yours,

    Charles

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  7. Like Ronald Hugh Morrieson, I.A.M is clearly ‘another of those poor buggers who gets discovered when they’re dead’.
    Clearly conservative critics had difficulty with the violence and sexuality of their writing and its failure to conform to the literary values of the period.

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  8. Well your correspondents have been digging deep! Assuming I.A.M. did arrange to have this book printed and published privately she demonstrated a fiery determination to tell the world how she felt about the lover who spurned her and what she would like to do with him. She was clearly on fire herself when she penned the poem. The title 'End of Nothing' equally sums up how she felt about this person. A very unhappy woman who more than adequately has vented her spleen.

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  9. I was born in Hawera and call tell you that Auckland Library has microfiches of births announced in the Hawera Star from the 1900s on, if that's any help. Great poem ... a wronged but in the end triumphant heroine ... really life-affirming, if not love-affirming!

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  10. Anonymous has beaten me to the mention of Hawera's other literary luminary, RH Morrieson. Indeed, could I.A.M. be a late (late) yet earlier contender to knock R.H.M off his perch as Hawera's best poet-in-their-own-country, besmirched whilst breathing, lionised when safely out of the way and dead so unlikely to tarnish the crown by getting drunk?

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  11. I was refreshed by the living imagery, the freshness of it all--this is a voice with a searing vision into our collective unconscious, wherein Autumn's fire is a pyre that will set the night on cold shoulder for the spurning lover. We are all Fallen.

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