A voice one can trust. The poetic tensions in his work stem, from one hand, in a refined sensibility that seeks balance, and an opposing, very different turmoil that rages against mediocrity and political oppression.
The refined voice in his poetry takes delight in the structure of cells, leaf formations, and so on. The beauty of a woman's breast, or an orchid. Images in his poems have the clarity of jewels, such as these lines from 'Cape York Dream'. "West of the green tablecloth,/ clouds spread like cottage/ cheese through a curtain of brush box." The rage is explosive, and propels the best poems in this collection like a speedboat in water - and that even includes the erotic poems, with their often mixed emotions.
I'll discuss the erotic poems first. 'Kamikaze Cherry' and 'Glace Cherries' are similar in tone; both of these are generous and wise. 'Kamikaze Cherry' envisions human beings able to truly give, squandering their lust effortlessly, like petals on the wind, scattered and fallen in a riot of grace. Of color and motion. "Lingering to gnarl" might be a metaphor in the poem for bitterness and compromise - certainly the ravages of old age. Falling like petals is how the poet sees a better death - "If only we might fall/ by this device,/ expose our genitals/ and die, / attracting gods as flies/ to sacrifice - / libation of the cherry tree." Nothing is prettied-up here - the key word is "flies". Yet the anger does not diminish the poem in any way. It only makes it stronger.
'Glace Cherries,' a very short poem, describes a transcendent moment on a bus. I'll quote it in its entirety.
"There are few things better
than a glimpse of cleavage
with a nipple at the edge,
peeping as a glace cherry
smorgasbord of food."
Again, the tone is expansive, although only a glimpse is offered; a small detail on what life promises, and a willingness to give oneself up to beauty. Similar poems, each a lyric gem, are 'Orange Blues', 'Modigliani', 'The Cherry Tree', 'My First Beach-girl', 'Alfresco lunch', (with its mixture of tenderness and cynicism), 'Anemone', and the heady personal myth-making of 'The Orchid Boy', which manages to evoke sensual pleasures and nostalgic sadness in each of its stanzas. My favorite line in the whole book occurs in stanza one of a poem called 'Truth is the Rainbow of the Mind: the heart abounds when words take off their clothes'. Yes, indeed.
Now Wilson's basic decency as a poet also comes out in his political poems, although at times he gets much too cranky and nit-picking about neighbors, squabbles at work, and so on. Without a grand theme behind it, such as the ravages of war, a poem such as 'Commercial III' ends up sounding trite. 'Australian Gothic', despite his good intentions, also ends up wearing thin. And the limericks often fall flat.
But when Wilson soars in a poem, he's eagle-sharp. 'Ode to Greed' is funny, sarcastic, and eminently relevant. And it should be recited at parties. 'Exhibition launch', a satire about social climbers, mentions a "blue-rinse vulture-blonde and travel snob," although in America we'd have to substitute voracious talk of celebrities for the patter about "Lady this and Lady that". Wilson is truly at his best in 'Return to Sydney from London, Spring/Summer 1994'. It has the urgency characteristic of his work, and the vivid imagery, from "the cannas flash their crimson tongues" to "the diamond light flocs walls of glass." There's an enduring love for his native land.
And that love shapes, without question, all of his poems. More than any other poet I've read, he resembles the great American poet Thomas McGrath. Tom McGrath was unashamedly political, against hypocrites and reactionaries of all kinds - technological robots, yuppies lulled by rhetoric, aristocrats and their toadies, and closet bigots. Wilson's poem 'The Wanderer' is very much like the long poems of McGrath; narrative, elegiac, and full of history's residue. So is 'Millennial Market Madness', with blistering lines that burn off the page. "The wagon rolled from coast to coast/ the heresy of growth, growth, growth" are lines that recall McGrath's wonderful line "All the grand night music of the dying culture of money" from his poem 'Night Meeting'.
In any case, the poem of Wilson's in this book that I'd consider a masterpiece is 'Poor Man's Chair'. Universal in its scope, but set in 1830's Sydney, it's about a transported convict named Charles "Bony" Anderson. Imagining the young man's pain, Wilson gives the graphic details of how his spine was exposed from the brutal punishment of "1,000 cuts or more". I'll end with the last stanza of the poem, remarkable for the line "amnesties of shame".
"And back in Sydney town
the wall of bush was razed
for musty elegance,
and amnesties of shame -
saved by the harbor's moat
from wrecker's ball and chain -
a poor man's Chair in naked stone,
a brutal gene, the seat remains."
(Reviewed by Sharon Olinka, March 2004)
