Darker and Lighter. Geoff Page. Five Islands Press.
Reviewed by Michael Byrne
Geoff Page (born 7 July 1940) is an Australian poet, novelist, retired teacher and jazz enthusiast. He has published numerous collections of poetry, as well as prose and verse novels. Poetry and jazz are his driving interests. He lives in Canberra. He also spends some time on his family property in Grafton, New South Wales. He has a poem about coming back to the country (‘The Signs’ for Robyne Bancroft):
The smell of eucalyptus oil
Hazing in the branches
The smell of blady grass on fire
The sound of silences at noon
Between the rubbings of cicadas
The scent of summer air on water
The slime on river stones
The smell of cowdung drying now
The scent of horsesweat yet to come
The mix of all these on the breeze
Is how I know I’m home
Here, the poem lacks punctuation. This allows the poem to breathe. Also, there is something happening in most of the lines of the poem. Also, the poem is short but not slight. ‘Three Widows’ is twice as long. The extract from it has seven lines:
They talk the thirties back between them:
its waxed floor and its moonlit tunes,
its songs around the high piano,
those nights of ‘good clean healthy fun’
where nice girls knew just where to stop
and like a flute of new champagne
they’re brimming at the top.
The last line has a certain vibrancy about it. And it rhymes with a previous line, giving it extra resolution. Also, it is an extract about the three widows enjoying themselves. The reader shares the enjoyment of the three widows. There are three widows. In an extract from ‘Adulterers’, a man and a woman are together:
the cigarettes are lit at last . . .
and sprawled there in a
twist of sweat
a conversation comes to life:
obsessions of the absent husband,
shortfalls of the absent wife.
This is a technically adept extract about the simple pleasures after sex, for some people – a post coital and a spoon. Also, Page does not condemn the actions of the adulterers. He has a poem just for them in Darker and Lighter. Darker and Lighter has one proper sonnet called ‘The Recipe’:
‘A sonnet tells me nothing but itself’,
as William Carlos Williams liked to say –
somewhat perversely lifting from the shelf
a pattern even free verse must obey.
Your sonnet’s eight and six are sacrosanct;
the greatest chef would hardly dare to alter
the ancient taste for eight lines neatly ranked –
then six from what Italians call the volta.
A rhyme scheme down the side is de rigeur.
Elizabethan maybe – or Petrarchan.
And cooks from Spenser on will all concur
the sonnet is the dish to make your mark in.
By God, we’re there and, yes, you’re doing fine.
And now, like pepper, add the fourteenth line.
Page shows exemplary general knowledge of poetry in his usage of the name of ‘Spenser’. Also, the last line has a brilliant simile. There is something happening in the last line in ‘Apparatchick for Susan Hampton’:
Set upon by ‘valkyries’ ,
by ‘vixen’ , ‘vipers’ , and ‘viragos’
our friend, the paranoid, declares
he very soon will ‘tweak the nose’
of one ‘high-shouldered bitch’ who is
‘a mistress of the rhetoric’ .
‘Obsequious’ , ‘obscure’ and ‘dull’ ,
‘a genuine a-parrot-chick’
who’s got the job that ‘should be mine’.
‘Blonde’ . . . ‘postmodern’ . . . ‘feminist’.
As most of us scrape back out chairs
he goes on slowly getting pissed.
This poem is hilarious, especially the ending. Again, Page dedicates a poem to someone. He does this often in Darker and Lighter. Page is a generous poet. He is also a poet with preoccupations (‘A Short Statement of Policy’):
My tolerance of drugs, dear friends,
is absolutely zero.
The man who settles heroin
will be the nation’s hero.
Page has a preoccupation with heroin and a preoccupation with Christianity. Page has mulled over these things in his head. When he does write about them his opinion is considered and substantial. His poetry is the beneficiary of this. Page, very cleverly, gets the last word about the view from his balcony (‘The Sky’):
Some people like to feel the soil
dissolve between their fingers,
the flowers it might,
with care, supply.
My balcony’s low maintenance.
I cultivate the sky.
Here, Page does his requisite daydreaming for a poet. And what a poet he is. Page, in his formal verse, has control over his subject matter. And his last lines, when they are flying solo, zip with resolution. Page is generous with his clarity and generous with his dedicating of poems to people. When his poems are funny they are really funny. And there are a number of funny poems in Darker and Lighter. The title of the book says it all – the serious poems are more poignant and moving. The humorous poems have a greater edge to them. His preoccupations with heroin and Christianity make for interesting subject matter. He weaves a winning aesthetic around them. Darker and Lighter is in thematic order. This works well. And Darker and Lighter is a collection of poems that have clarity, are interesting and have a winning aesthetic.
Michael Byrne 