The bone chanter: Unpublished poems 1945-72

by James K. Baxter

107 pages, Paperback

First published May 28, 1977

About the author

James Keir Baxter was a poet, and is a celebrated figure in New Zealand society.

In his critical study Lives of the Poets, Michael Schmidt defines Baxter's 'Jacobean consonantal rhetoric'.Schmidt has claimed that Baxter was 'one of the most precocious poets of the century' whose neglect outside of New Zealand is baffling. His writing was affected by his alcoholism. His work drew upon Dylan Thomas and Yeats; then on MacNeice and Lowell. Michael Schmidt identifies 'an amalgam of Hopkins, Thomas and native atavisms' in Baxter's 'Prelude N.Z.

Reviews

[Marina · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE FARM

Calves with blue cloudy eyes
Thrust their heads into the pail

And snorted bubbles. I remember the rise
Where Walter and I split old, dry logs with the mall

Below the railway line. The whole farm
Is hidden somewhere in my guts, as if

I'd swallowed it: the creek, the byres, the haybarn,
The crumbs of wood and resin in the sawpit.

All tracks led outward then. I did not see
How bones and apples rot under the tree

In cocksfoot grass, or guess the size
Of the world, a manuka nut in the sun's gaze.