ELEGY FOR MY

FATHER’S FATHER

James K Baxter
Baxter, James K. 1926–1972

 A New Zealand poet, playwright, and critic, Baxter is

generally ranked among the finest authors that country has
produced. His work is strongly regional, drawing inspiration
from the New Zealand wilderness, its tribal history, and
natural cycles. Baxter's rejection of conventional social
standards is evidenced by the unorthodoxy of much of his
verse. A devout Christian, he has shaped his poetic
philosophy to include elements of both religious and
classical mythology, creating a viewpoint that is as highly
moral as it is individualistic. To Baxter, a poem must be "a
cell of good living in a corrupt society." Stylistically, his
work is lyrical and metaphorical, and often shows the
influence of Lawrence Durrell and Robert Lowell.
Biography and Background

 Born in 1926, James K Baxter became one of

New Zealand’s finest poets and most
controversial figures. His judgments of
society were often harsh, and were not
always well received, but he was deeply
concerned with the poor and those
marginalised by society.
 Was born at Dunedin, New Zealand. His father was a pacifist farmer of
Scottish descent and his mother took degrees in languages at Sydney
and Cambridge. Baxter began to write verse at 7 and his elegy-
dominated first volume, Beyond the Palisade, was published in 1944
when he was 18, manifesting the influence of Yeats and Dylan Thomas;
the following year Allen Curnow singled him out for praise in the
introduction to his A Book of New Zealand Verse 1923 –45 . He entered
the University of Otago in 1944 but soon gave up, largely (by his own
admission) because of excessive drinking. From an early age he
claimed various mystical experiences which turned Christian in his late
teens. He became a fervent Roman Catholic at the age of 32, but this
did not lessen the pace of his hard-lived life; his major conflict was
with the Calvinism in which he said he had been brought up, claiming
that ‘New Zealand society (and, indeed, modern Western society in
general) carries like strychnine in its bones a strong unconscious
residue of the doctrines and ethics of Calvinism’. He remained a self-
styled figure of the ‘wilderness’ who always saw the artist as a
tribesman cut off from his tribe, even when he returned to Otago
University as Burns Fellow. Latterly he lived in the small Maori
settlement of Jerusalem; he died at the age of 46 while on a visit to
Auckland.
 Despite his breaches of taste, his repetitiveness, and his excessive
output, Baxter is a major figure in twentieth-century English poetry:
in New Zealand only Allen Curnow can rival his achievement.
Curnow's urbanity and self-consciousness contrast markedly with
the more inspirational wildness of Baxter; Baxter attacked Curnow
fiercely for being stuck in the politically anxious Thirties, when
writers agonized over the imperialist ill-treatment of the Maoris,
ignoring the new poets who ‘in the late Forties and Fifties … seceded
from the self-conscious New Zealandism … and began to write
simply as people who happened to live in a given time and place’. It
is an ironic charge for Baxter to level, since his poetry, though
founded in personal observation and experience of nature, is always
socially aware (he was lastingly affected by the poverty of Japan and
India, which he visited on a UNESCO grant in 1958 ), and his later
poetry is suffused with Maori words and themes. Paradoxically, too,
his attacks on Calvinism cover a Calvinist contempt for modern
culture's shoddy acquisitiveness. His poetry is hectoring, vatic, and
often sexist; but it is never dull, because nearly every line has
urgency and verbal life. He was a fine critic, and he wrote good
pieces on ‘Tam O'Shanter’ and on Wilde.
 Elegy for My Father’s Father
He knew in the hour he died
That his heart had never
spoken
In eighty years of days.
O for the tall tower broken
Memorial is denied:
And the unchanging cairn
That pipes could set ablaze
An aaronsrod and blossom.
They stood by the graveside
From his bitter veins born
And mourned him in their
fashion.
A chain of sods in a day
He could slice and build
High as the head of a man
And a flowering cherry tree
On his walking shoulder held
Under the lion sun.
When he was old and blind
He sat in a curved chair
All day by the kitchen fire.
Many hours he had seen
The stars in their drunken
dancing
Through the burning-glass
of his mind
And sober knew the green
Boughs of heaven folding
The winter world in their
hand.
The pride of his heart was
dumb.
He knew in the hour he died
That his heart had never
spoken
In song or bridal bed.
And the naked thought fell
back
To a house by the waterside
And the leaves the wind had
shaken
Then for a child’s sake:
To the waves all night awake
With the dark mouths of the
dead.
The tongues of water spoke
And his heart was unafraid.
The SIFT method to analyse and revise poems.

Specify the subject matter and sense of the poem through a

brief summary

Inform us of the intention of the poet and his/her main ideas

overall

Focus on the form ( structure/punctuation) and the feelings

conveyed ( poet’s attitude/tone used) and how this
highlights the main ideas

Tell us about the techniques, imagery and poetic language

that show the ways ideas are presented
Childhood /Youth Poetry
 Do now: Read Allen Curnow’s ‘Country School’ –
1st for the gist, 2nd for better understanding, 3rd
for meanings – annotate features of the poem
(language/ sound/ structure/ scansion)
 Next: look back at Elegy – complete TEAR chart.
Note down comments for deeper analysis.
 Then: In groups – divide yourselves up so that
half analyse ‘My Parents’ using SIFT and half
analyse ‘Country School’ also using SIFT.
 EXIT PASS: each group feed back to class a
point about each poem.
 Close Reading Questions
 Diction
“cairn” (heap of stones set up as a
T E A R
landmark, monument, tombstone) ii)
“aarons rod” look this up.
 What is the effect of the title (identify (provide (analyse (explain
“father’s father”, instead of technique) example) the how it is
“grandfather”? meaning) relevant
 What is the effect of the soft to the
consonants in the 1st line? poem)
 Elegy means a lament – identify
where the poem’s tone changes
from celebration, to sorrow, and
to regret
 . Identify at least 10 different
language techniques – there is
personification, metaphor,
repetition and many others. Draw
up a chart with the headings: “T”
for Technique, “E” for Example, “A”
for analyse, and “R” for relevance.
Deeper Reading
 This single stanza poem presents a developing set of
responses to the death of the narrator’s grandfather,
though the term ‘Father’s Father’ in the title makes the line
of progression through family lines more explicit than the
noun ‘grandfather’.
 Though the term ‘Elegy’ means lament, the tone of the
poem is mixed, with celebration, sorrow and regret. One of
the key regrets is for a life lived without expression of
feelings; twice the poem refers to the fact that ‘his heart
had never spoken’. The reader gains the impression of a
somewhat grim and taciturn man. Even his family seem to
find it difficult to mourn his passing: ‘They stood by the
graveside/ ... / And mouned him in their fashion.’
Deeper Reading continued

 However, the poem also pays tribute to his

strength and endurance. These images are
directly followed by the description of him ‘old
and blind’, sitting ‘All day’. The suddenness of the
contrast emphasises the gulf between his prime
and his old age. The poem also suggest, that
despite his failure to express feelings, he was
sensitive to his experiences of the natural world
around him. The narrator finally conjectures that
his grandfather’s keen awareness of the cycle of
life enabled him to be ‘unafraid’ of death.