Further Convictions Pending - Poems 1992-2008 Vincent O'Sullivan (Victoria University Press, 2010)  $35.00 ISBN 9780864736062

Harvey Molloy

This volume collects around forty poems from the four books of poetry O'Sullivan has published since 1992 (including poems from the two Montana New Zealand Book Award winners, 1999's Seeing You Asked and 2005's Nice morning for it, Adam), and tops it off with a hamper of forty-two new poems.  It's a staggering achievement, especially considering O'Sullivan's completion of a biography of John Mulgan during this period.

O'Sullivan's poetry is at once cerebral, sensual, and musical.  There's a great rigour in his writing-the poems are playful and sometimes follow an idea as it grows but they are never sloppy or unconsidered.  O'Sullivan's poems aim for precision. His work reminds us that each of us is a culture with our own languages, beliefs, histories; all of which come into play every time we stop to reflect on our own convictions.  Sometimes even a simple word or phrase suggests an entire personal history and idiolect: the title of the poem ‘clever, mind' evokes a Catholic childhood.  O'Sullivan's rigour is part of his poetry's engagement with truth, the truth (or perhaps ‘truths') of the world.  The world itself seems to invite this search, in the words of ‘As is, is':

Come down, each atom invites, come down to where
        things actually are

The difficulty is that reality consists of more than atoms.  The great joy of the poems from Nice morning for it, Adam is that the sequence explores what this reality might be. O'Sullivan here returns to the original sense of theoria-not as the building of abstract architectonic systems but rather as the perception of the truth of God (or, should the ‘G' word be too frightening, at least the perception of the ‘Good').  We are in the world but our world is more than atoms. We find that we are in stories-the story of our family circumstances and the stories of culture. We are also not passive observers; we are actors faced with choices and dilemmas. ‘After such events' begins:

This week I have put down two bits of reality
which were far cries from what I would call
a reality of my own.

Reality also involves the bits of reality of other peoples lives and our acknowledgement of those realities (which is perhaps another word for the ‘good') even if, as in the line from ‘Mid-sentence, so to speak' we remain in "The last reality, so singularly one's own". 

O'Sullivan's work also has a political dimension.  Poems such as ‘Mission statement' calls for an understanding that we must never settle for the glib consensus manufactured by rhetoric-we should not be fooled into thinking that saying makes it so.  O'Sullivan's work favours dialogue with others and some form of fidelity to what we actually experience.  The alternative to dialogue is war. The poem ‘Off limits' begins: "No one finds poetry in the rubble." 

The selection of poems from the four preceding volumes provides a context for the more recent poems which crown the book.  These poems are  less concerned with reading and interpretation and more focused on memory and reflection.  I cannot recommend this collection enough: O'Sullivan's poetry yields constant rewards on rereading.

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