Michele Leggott. Mezzaluna: Selected Poems. Auckland University Press, 2020. RRP $35. 216 pp.
One of my students wrote an essay for our Creative Nonfiction course discussing the use of the senses in the work of two prose writers. The first she discussed, a local blogger and essayist, turned out to rely almost exclusively on visual cues: everything depended on colours, shapes, and things one could see. The second, an international memoirist and cultural commentator, was far more variable in her use of all five senses: touch, taste, sight, scent and hearing — almost (in Sigmund Freud’s phrase) polymorphously perverse in her sensuous appreciation of the world around her. That student was blind.
The relevance of this anecdote to Michele Leggott’s comprehensive selection from more than 30 years of her poetry is not as simple as it might appear. Yes, Michele is blind. Macular degeneration has gradually robbed her of her sight. Yes, she is one of the most acutely sensory of contemporary poets: from her very first book, Like This? (1988), to her latest, Vanishing Points (2017), reviewers and critics have commented on her tendency to restate abstractions in concrete terms.
If there’s a paradox there, it revealed itself early on. When you think of an oeuvre that includes Journey to Portugal (2007), a sumptuous limited edition of poems accompanied by hand-made Gretchen Albrecht collages, as well as a series of books whose shape, size and aesthetic characteristics show an obsessive concern with detail more common to workers in the visual arts, it’s clear that — for Michele — poetry is a thing which transcends any narrow formal definitions of ‘for the page’ or ‘for the voice’. The present book is no exception. If I had to declare a theme in any overview of Michele Leggott’s protean poetic project over the past 30 years, it would be dualities. The North American / New Zealand double focus displayed by the simultaneous publication of her selected poems in both places is nothing new in her work. When she returned to this country in 1985, having completed a doctorate in Canada on the work of American poet Louis Zukofsky, it was apparent at once that she’d imbibed a good deal of his intensely compressed aesthetics in the process. If not a L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poet, she was at any rate already one whose relation to contemporary poetics as well as poetic practice was intimate and assured.
That first book, Like This?, won a number of awards, not least the International PEN First Book of Poetry award. It was both accessible and scholarly. When I say that her poetry embraces dualities, it’s important to stress that I don’t mean dichotomies: it’s never either/or in Michele’s work — always both/and.
The first and most irritating label her creative work to date has had to endure is ‘academic poetry’. Those of us who happen to work in the tertiary-education industry — in this country, at any rate — have to get used to complaints about living in ‘ivory towers’ and a supposed preoccupation with poetics over everyday life, style over substance, experimentation over mainstream accessibility . . .The only real answer to such accusations is the quality and durability of the work in question. Michele’s poetry has always seemed to me to constitute the perfect answer to this particular bugbear.
Her third book, DIA, succeeded in combining her academic interests in recuperating the voices of neglected local women writers with the formalist techniques she’d picked up from a battery of writers, local and international, Zukofsky, Ian Wedde, Susan Howe, and a host of others. The result was a tour-de-force of stunning visual design combined with sensuous imagery — the kissing lips of ‘Micromelismata’ being the most famous of many examples. There were so many levels on which one could read these poems that they almost defied criticism. Above all, though, there’s nothing particularly ‘ivory tower’ about pointing out examples of gender discrimination past and present.
The flexible instrument of Michele’s intellectual interest in such ‘lost voices’ — whether they belonged to Ursula Bethell, Eileen Duggan, Iris Guiver Wilkinson (Robin Hyde), or (more recently) Alan Brunton and Emily Harris — has informed her poetry ever since, but also resulted in a series of essays and editions of their work which have assisted in rewriting the map of New Zealand letters.
As the first National Library-appointed New Zealand Poet Laureate from 2008 to 2009, Michele started to compose a series of poems meant more for the ear than the eye — collected in Mirabile Dictu (2009) and Heartland (2014): both well sampled from in the present volume. Once again, though, she confounded expectations of more in the same vein with her latest book Vanishing Points, a collection of prose poems and lineated pieces designed to engage more systematically than ever before with history itself: her own, as in her alternate-past piece about her mother’s painting career, ‘Self-Portrait: Still Life. A Family Story’ (alas, not included here), and New Zealand’s, in ‘The Fascicles’ and ‘Emily and Her Sisters’ (both included in full).
The very last poem in the book, a hitherto uncollected piece called ‘the wedding party’ (first published in Poetry New Zealand Yearbook 2019) continues this theme with its imagery drawn from the Taranaki war of the 1860s, and its effortless shifting from Māori to English to Latin (intentionally garbled for safe transmission by government spies).
Thirty years on, Michele Leggott’s work continues to give ‘academic writing’ a good name. Why not read a poet so attentive to sources; to the sound and texture of the past; to the sensuous realities of beach, sun, sand which are our heritage in these islands; to the aesthetic patterning as well as the careful sounding out of words; to the dark which we come from — and return to — and the light which we try to shed while we’re here? I can’t think of a good reason. Can you?
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Original text:
Like This?
Michele Leggott. Mezzaluna: Selected Poems. ISBN 978-0-8195-7907-2. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2020. RRP $US18.95. 216 pp.
Michele Leggott. Mezzaluna: Selected Poems. ISBN 9-781-86940-907-4. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2020. RRP $NZ 35. 216 pp.
One of my students wrote an essay discussing the use of the senses in the work of two prose writers for our Creative Nonfiction course here at Massey. The first she discussed, a local blogger and essayist, turned out to rely almost exclusively on visual cues: everything depended on colours, shapes, and things one could see. The second, an international memoirist and cultural commentator, was far more variable in her use of all five senses: touch, taste, sight, scent, and hearing – almost (in Sigmund Freud’s phrase) polymorphously perverse in her sensuous appreciation of the world around her.
That student was blind.
The relevance of this anecdote to Michele Leggott’s comprehensive selection from more than thirty years of her poetry is not as simple as it might appear. Yes, Michele is blind. Macular degeneration has gradually robbed her of her sight over a period of decades. Yes, she is one of the most acutely sensory of contemporary poets: from her very first book, Like This? (1988) to her latest, Vanishing Points (2017) reviewers and critics have commented on her tendency to restate abstractions in concrete terms.
I recall an old essay of Michele’s on Robert Duncan where she began by remarking how the recurrence of a certain term in his poems which sounded a bit like the name of the dog next door made the latter come barking up to the fence on a regular basis throughout the summer – rather like the repetition of the word ‘caddy’ which attracts poor Benjy Compson to the fence of a neighbouring golf-course, thus prompting the long reverie about his lost sister Caddie which opens William Faulkner’s Sound and the Fury.
If there’s a paradox there, it revealed itself early on. When you think of an oeuvre which includes a sumptuous limited edition of poems accompanied by hand-made Gretchen Albrecht collages, Journey to Portugal (2007), as well as a series of books whose shape, size, and aesthetic characteristics show an obsessive concern with detail more common to workers in the visual arts, it’s clear that – for Michele – poetry is a thing which transcends any narrow formal definitions of ‘for the page’ or ‘for the voice.’
The present book is no exception. I happen to be privileged to own copies of both the American and New Zealand editions of Mezzaluna. Strange to say, given they have the same pagination and essential layout, the two books look quite different. The American edition uses thistledown to divide up the various sections, as well as adorning the front cover. The New Zealand edition uses long meandering riverine shapes to achieve the same object.
I guess if I had to declare a theme in any overview I’d care to provide of Michele Leggott’s protean poetic project over the past thirty years, it would be dualities. This North American / New Zealand double focus is nothing new in her work. When she returned to this country in 1985, having completed a Doctorate in Canada on the work of American poet Louis Zukofsky, it was apparent at once that she’d imbibed a good deal of his intensely compressed aesthetics in the process. If not a L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poet, she was at any rate already one whose relation to contemporary poetics as well as poetic practice was intimate and assured.
That first book, Like This?, won a number of awards, not least the International PEN First Book of Poetry award. More to the point, it was both accessible and scholarly. When I say that her poetry embraces dualities, it’s important to stress that I don’t mean dichotomies: it’s never either/or in Michele’s work – always both/and.
I suppose the first and most irritating label her creative work to date has had to endure is ‘Academic poetry.’ Those of us who happen to work in the tertiary education industry – in this country, at any rate – have to get used to complaints about living in ‘Ivory Towers’ and a supposed preoccupation with poetics over everyday life, style over substance, experimentation over mainstream accessibility …
The only real answer to such accusations – which can admittedly have a certain validity at times – is the quality and durability of the work in question. Michele’s poetry has always seemed to me to constitute the perfect answer to this particular bugbear.
Her third book, DIA, succeeded in combining her Academic interests in recuperating the voices of neglected local women writers with the formalist techniques she’d picked up from a battery of writers, local and international, Zukofsky, Ian Wedde, Susan Howe, and a host of others. The result was a tour-de-force of stunning visual design combined with sensuous imagery – the kissing lips of ‘Micromelismata’ being the most famous of many examples. There were so many levels on which one could read these poems, that they almost defied criticism. Above all, though, there’s nothing particularly ‘Ivory Tower’ about pointing out examples of gender discrimination past and present.
The flexible instrument of Michele’s intellectual interest in such ‘lost voices’ – whether they belonged to Ursula Bethell, Eileen Duggan, Iris Guiver Wilkinson [Robin Hyde], or (more recently) Alan Brunton and Emily Harris – has informed her poetry ever since, but also resulted in a series of essays and editions of their work which have assisted in rewriting the map of New Zealand letters.
As the first National Library-appointed NZ Poet Laureate from 2008-9, Michele started to compose a series of poems meant more for the ear than the eye – collected in Mirabile Dictu (2009) and Heartland (2014): both well sampled from in the present volume. Once again, though, she confounded expectations of more in the same vein with her latest book Vanishing Points, a collection of prose poems and lineated pieces designed to engage more systematically than ever before with history itself: her own, as in her alternate-past piece about her mother’s painting career, ‘Self-Portrait: Still Life. A Family Story’ (alas, not included here), and New Zealand’s, in ‘The Fascicles’ and ‘Emily and Her Sisters’ (both included in full).
The very last poem in the book, a hitherto uncollected piece called ‘the wedding party’ (first published in Poetry NZ Yearbook 2019) continues this theme with its imagery drawn from the Taranaki war of the 1860s, and its effortless shifting from Māori to English to Latin (intentionally garbled for safe transmission by Government spies).
Thirty years on, Michele Leggott’s work continues to give ‘Academic writing’ a good name. Why not read a poet so attentive to sources; to the sound and texture of the past; to the sensuous realities of beach, sun, sand which are our heritage in these islands; to the aesthetic patterning as well as the careful sounding out of words; to the dark which we come from – and return to – and the light which we try to shed while we’re here?
I can’t think of a good reason. Can you?
[1172 wds]
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(25-29/8/20)
Poetry New Zealand Yearbook 2021. ISBN 978-0-9951354-2-0 (March 2021): 352-54.
[997 wds]
Michele Leggott & Olive (2011)
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