New Zealand Poetry Society Te Hunga Tito Ruri o Aotearoa
into the vanishing point
into the vanishing point Helen Bascand (Steele Roberts, 2007) ISBN 9 781877 448027
Nola Borrell
Helen Bascand once said, "I must step aside to let you enter the poem". She wants her readers to "hop on board and travel" with her and make their own connections ('A Metaphorical Presence,' Bravado 7).
In no time at all, that was just what I was doing.
into the vanishing point is the second collection of poetry for this Christchurch poet. Her first was windows on the morning side (Sudden Valley Press, 2001). Her work includes publication in many journals and anthologies, and Helen won the NZPS international haiku competition in 2000.
This collection has six sections - five for 65 poems, one for 22 haiku. They have evocative titles: 'memory perches on stilts', 'if I shut one eye', love falls in slices', 'time on the edge of land' and 'we loom our stories'. Family history, childhood, young love, time passing, our human stories. Two short haibun fit into a poetry section: crisp and succinct, the everyday and intense feeling artfully paced. More please! There's a bonus haiku at the beginning of each section; e.g. "in the shed/ calendars/ of cobwebs" for memory.
I read the haiku first. I am just home from a tramp with its gingko possibilities. ("how quiet/ the butterfly" writes Helen.)
Here are mainly senryu, sharply focused and with an undercurrent of tension: "bring and buy -/ her cake left over" and "teenage daughter/ beyond the policeman at the door/ the street light". But only 22. Again, I want more!
Happily, the concision, clear images and contained feeling extend to the longer poems. Helen's haiku voice flows on. Moment after moment. A monarch butterfly shakes off its cocoon:
"but it's one breath and I need
another
a string of them threaded into
a lifetime"
(Moment)
Indeed, strings of moments. "I hang the stars each night, above my door" ('Origins'), the "night (is) hung with questions" ('Finishing the book and starting all over') and, more ominously, "words rattle like unstrung bones" ('here be dragons').
Several poems are very simple, short, one image poems; e g a camellia falling ('Calligraphy'). Others delve into the riches of pre-history and myth and human art, are multi-layered.
Nature, including human nature, is this poet's territory. She especially delights in sea and flight images. (Since I have been peering through binoculars at the grace and sweep of seabirds, I am very content.) For me, 'Bush path' poses the dilemma of how to see the bird which was, and is now no longer - though this short poem opens itself to other interpretations. Hear the rhythm and musicality, typical of many of Helen's poems.
"Flick of a flash of the wing - gone
like the twitch of a horse's ear.
Scent above the wet-mould damp,
gone - as quickly as a passing girl.
Bell-note and I'm looking for sound -
it's gone in the twang of our voices."
(Bush path)
Helen never lets her love of the beautiful blind her to reality. She moves from: "We come from the east to the west coast/ travel beside the complete rainbow" to "two hawks bombard a magpie ..... and flying becomes black-and-white-falling/ into the rainbow" ('Opposites'). One of the few ostensibly political poems uses ravens as metaphor for stealth bombers over Iraq. I jumped at the fierce concluding lines:
"this is the bread in its beak,
offered to saints -
this is the blood it will drink."
(Raven)
The poet catches human moments which we recognise, though don't always name. Have you met the hospital patient who tells a joke to cheer you up? Here are lines from 'Even Now'. Apt title!
"He says, Have you heard the one
about the sparrow?
His rock-pool eyes flood
with laughter
waves tide-wash over us.
We laugh before we know why -
laugh into memory beyond the joke, ..."
I delight in Helen's rescuing of words as in "fender, scuttle, davenport and sconce" in 'Great-aunts'. But she also acknowledges that the natural world doesn't need words. "sandpipers gleaning/ on the edge of tide and land/ being/ simply sandpipers gleaning" ('Tide'). In 'Sea' this idea is repeated with the implicit parallel of human relating.
"words are flowing in and out
sea has no need of them -
listening, we walk and talk about
words, flowing in and out
'spume & slap, boom & lap - we doubt
there's any wisdom
in words that flow in and out
sea has no need of them."
Moreover, Helen's writing is cohesive whether a five word senryu, a poem of several stanzas, or, indeed, her whole book which is well-structured and presented. Poems are thoughtfully sequenced, and juxtaposed. The appeasing of the gods with lemons and daffodils in a blue bowl "on the altar of the coffee table" ('The colour of lemons') is opposite 'all of a sudden I feel uncertain', which concludes:
"I am this bird in full flight
winging straight into trees
existing in a window
the one that breaks its neck"
The poems in the final section are more adventurous, wider in their sweep and style. Surprises in subject too::'How to build a dry stone wall' and 'Londinos'. I found the following lines, especially the final image, from 'Robin Hyde - five photos - & a poem' particularly striking.
"Persephone in her Winter
cradles jonquils.
The dark downward stair
swallows all her shadow
until day is only
the memory of day
is only
the colour of jonquils - and night
is the haunting weight
of jonquils in her bare arms."
The cover image is by Jane Bascand, the design by Dave Bascand - both complementing the poems. (One ever so minor point: There are two poems with the same title: 'Sea'.)
Overall, a delight. Find quiet wisdom and beauty, music and rhythm, vivid images and honed writing. The final poem is called 'Finishing the book and starting all over' - which is just what I did. Hop on board and make your own connections.
