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120 poems of the ‘ Chancy Now’ – ‘ still here, getting on, getting away / with things not planned, not prayed for, never promised’ . In the 1970s a young professor, I rescued from a puddle in Princes Street a Penguin of Nietzsche’ s Thus Spake Zarathustra, dried it and read it, annotating as I went, underlining his thought that one must have chaos within if one is to give birth to a dancing star – At 93, his wife Kay and son Oliver recently dead, writing nothing, C. K. Stead thought there were no more books. Then, ‘ alive on pills, / and the surgeon’ s knife’ , enduring grief and recovery, sonnets began to appear, three or four a week, the poems collected in this volume. Chaos won’ t teach a sonnet to limit its lines but every sonnet should have its dancing star. From the ABs under the high ball to Braunias’ s lamingtons, from Dionysus to Guide Rangi, from the Uber driver (‘ He’ s a Wittgenstein man so we get along perfectly / passing over in silence what can’ t be discussed’ ) to the author (‘ My Chookspeak’ s better than my French because I learned it / in the right way, by ear, not off the page’ ), 120 sonnets reveal a poet battered, bruised and still in his prime. After a sonnet tending to self-pit and crap I consign it to the bin and set off knowing today’ s wild northerly wind and rough seas at Kohi will knock me into shape
Product Information
Pages: 120
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Auckland University Press
Publication Date: 2027-04-08
ISBN: 9781776712793
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