Andrew Taylor was the youngest of that batch and he soon moved out of Melbourne, ending up for a long time in Adelaide, before taking up a Professorship in Western Australia. He is one of the first generation of university-based poets. We tend to forget that these only made an impact in the 1960s, though Alec Hope, the grand-daddy of that line of practice, was a sort of underground figure for years before. It was the sudden increase in university places (one of the few enlightened projects of R.G.Menzies when he was PM) from the later 1950s on which caused this tidal change, both in education and in the sort of poetry which then became fashionable. Prior to the late 1950s most Australian poets were probably journalists, if they had a job.
So Andrew Taylor does reflect this background of a broadly-based humanist education. He has, however, been always eager to add the particular spice of his own observations, his own reflections, and his own attractively quirky mind. The present volume continues that trend. It is poetry that can take a second reading, but it is also poetry that can catch your attention first-off.
I suppose one of the key things here is that the poems may be about specific incidents or events, and certainly specific responses, but they are not poems which will quickly date, or grow creaky once their starting point has grown listless as last year's telephone directory.
It is true that this suave and resonant collection has been out for a little while, but it is still worth catching up with. Although the title suggests the Andrew Taylor who is a sophisticated traveller and observer of things European and American, in fact the collection begins with some graphically Australian (indeed, West Australian) poems full of salt flats and marshland: Or this, from a sequence on 'Rain':
VI
Having knocked out electrical supplies
For most of the coastal suburbs
As it does every year
The storm moves on to us
Pruning our trees tearing the lawn
From the ground
And continues its high-speed career
Over the Escarpment to bring
The Wheatbelt the rain it needs
We lick our wounds
Again
Mourning the woman and her child who crawled
Out of their wrecked car onto
Downed powerlines lethal with life
Little kicks and tricks crop up like this, below a sort of calm surface that can almost lull you into chair-in-the-corner relaxation. Beware; there is always broken glass, or a knife, or a fart-pillow in waiting.
There is also a group of poems about Australian Capital cities (perhaps the first since Bruce Beaver in As It Was back in 1979). These poems show how you can generalise without losing impact or precision. Taylor has a nice slightly sardonic eye for the little details that count:
Perth
Three days west of Melbourne
My plane lands at the Invisible City.
The Indian Ocean glistens and winks
In late April as the sated populace
Bored with beaches watches Eastern Rules
Played elsewhere in mud, rain and television.
The small detail of 'Eastern Rules' says it all.
The book is divided into 5 Parts, of which only one (Part 4) has a specific title, 'Accessories After The Facts ...' This is a wonderful sequence, all about things like socks, shirts and underpants; handbag, earrings and shoes. There are 20 of them, and they allow Andrew Taylor to unbend and upend expectations, as well as give him a great opportunity to polish his wit (and his wisdom). Vintage stuff:
Underpants
Leave a lot to be desired
Relatively uncovered
Are modesty itself
So long as they're hidden
Account for 60% of the washing
And are always less clean than clean
You feel good girding your loins with them
And even better taking them off
But there does remain the worldly-wise Andrew Taylor who, in the title poem, refers to the closing opera in Wagner's great cycle 'The Ring of The Niebelungen' but with a wistful shrug, reducing 'The Twilight of the Gods' to an obviously very ordinary café. It is this tugging down of the grandiose to the everyday which poignantly records for us the plangent memorability of something completely forgettable - to others:
"It was always
A café at the edge of danger
And at the end of our worlds. We called it
The Gotterdammerung Café
An ordinary over-lookable place
Which might endure
When heaven burned down.
We have. It did.
Twenty-five years on
We'll toast such persistence
With the fabulous
Commonplace opulence
That we brew afresh
Each day of our lives."
The cover note says this is Andrew Taylor's tenth book of poetry "continuing his reputation as one of Australia's most independent and accomplished poets". The important thing is that, though it might be his tenth book, there is still enough freshness and otherness in it to make one feel the author is still opening doors and passageways for himself and his readers. Sometimes in those passageways he discovers odd things, like underpants.
(Reviewed by Thomas Shapcott, March 2004)
