"My father died when he was 93, &, even then, his death was at least partially due to complications from an amputated leg. Which means there are longevity genes in my family. So it's somewhat ironic that the earliest poem in this selection / collection, "Lizard", written when I was seventeen — 'When one is seventeen, one isn't serious' wrote Rimbaud, in error, but he can be forgiven for he was only fifteen when he wrote the line — stems from feelings of mortality brought on by the teenage angst that beset me at the time.
"As the subtitle of this book indicates — Poems 1959-2008 — those feelings were somewhat premature. But they're still around, since my vision of a neat fifty years of poetry was taken over once again by similar feelings: I wanted the book out there in order to make sure that I was around to see it."
However, based on the title given in a 2009 report on highlights of the previous year in New Zealand literature published in the Journal of Commonwealth Literature, I seem to have severely underestimated my longevity. There, the book is called Pelican Dreaming: Poems 1859-2998.
Pity I can't lay my hands on it to see what I'm going to write during the next 800 or so years. Or what I wrote during my Victorian Period.
1 comment:
I plan to live long enough to publish this version, too!
Eileen
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