Collected Poems, 1951-2006 by C. K. Stead (Auckland University Press, $60.00).
By guest reviewer Gordon McLauchlan.

My first thought when I picked up this book containing 55 years of Karl Stead’s poetry was it seemed too much like an end to it, like a tombstone. I would not have mentioned that here if the author had not said the same thing at the book’s launch. He assured us though that it was not the end. He intends to keep on writing poetry.

And that is good news because this collection has an air of history about it, and of autobiography, with many of the poems carrying the tone of their time, and thinking through contemporary subjects. To me, who has lived through that time, I relish them because of their emotional and intellectual accuracy. Hopefully, the story will continue for a few years yet, because a story is what these poems add up to.

It may be tempting to browse the book but that would be a mistake. It should be started at the beginning and worked through, although obviously not without interruption, because the sequence tells us much. By about where Dog starts, I decide that the early poems have a livelier touch, richer in feeling, less clever, with such extraordinarily perceptive pieces like the seven poems under America. But then I become less sure. With The Red Tram, which I read when it came out, I am seriously engaged again. Now is the time to revisit it, browsing. ,