Good Business Ian Wedde

(Auckland University Press, 2009) ISBN 978-86940-442-0 RRP $24.99

Gill Ward

I loved this book! Perhaps I am the wrong person to review it because it may be a one-dimensional review, heavy on the side of approval.

Ian Wedde is a prolific poet, his literary past is teeming with poetry collections (15 of them) to say nothing of his novels and editing and awards. Wedde's intellect shines through in all his writing but somehow he manages to make his poetry accessible to even the meanest mind. As the oft quoted and famous T S Eliot said, "Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood".

Yes, there are allusions to other poetry and art and history and literature peppered through his poems and they give depth and feeling, as in the opening poem ‘Epithalamion', set so firmly in the Wellington we know but with the ancient undertones of Spencer (or even e e cummings, who had his own version) and the sly, filmatic humour of Leakey and Julia, but the tone would get you even if you missed the references.

As for the poetry of Wellington in the ‘Good Business' section - it is so full of nostalgia and wry sweetness the reader cannot help but be seduced. Wedde paints with his words; all the poems in this book are so visual. You walk that walk with him, see the colours, inhale the smells, feel the dry asphalt under your feet, the grit in your eyes as you rub shoulders with the passing parade of colourful inhabitants. The poetry places you firmly there.

All the street poems echo each other - I love that. The massage oils mixed with the engine oil and the furniture polish, the red flags of Toyota with the red tomatoes in the scrap metal recycler, the tyres on the carpets stretching to the rug rival across the street, the cruelly done-for chickens in KFC over from the winers and diners at the SPCA. The last poem about C&O polishing oil made the old radio jingle from the 1950's  ring in my head for an hour or so - it went something like this, "Good morning Mr C. Salutations Mr O". Who remembers that? These poems are a moving tribute to Wedde's father to whom this part of the book is dedicated. I must stop now - but you get the idea?

Wedde gives us a wondrous and ironic selection of dream poems. He takes us on a wide-ranging world journey. He introduces his pets and his friends. He shares his tenderness. Gives us poetry as it should be.

I am struggling not to quote lines from poems - it seems so unfair to pluck out a line without its head and shoulders and feet and legs, but let me assure you there are beautiful lines in these poems and beautiful words - words you don't hear so often, like jejune and tenebrous. Wedde's word are carefully chosen and meticulously placed. Nothing is random but it is never laboured.

A suggestion - for the price of a couple of night's takeaways being replaced by eggs and toast and (budget) baked beans at home you could own this book. It would give you pleasure and feed your mind. Go on.

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