Steele, Peter, White Knight with Beebox : New and Selected Poems. John Leonard Press, 2008. RRP $24.95. ISBN 978 0 9805269 0 5
It is always good to come back into the steadying orbit of a Steele poem, what with so much dark energy and dodgy Plutos moving about. This selection shows what a consistent object the Steele poem is, and just as we view the universe backward in time from today, so the book starts with the most recent illuminations then works back to beginnings.
The Steele poem is like this. It generally never goes beyond a page, or needs to. Concentration of information sometimes obstructs, sometimes enables clarity, but even with the simplest poem we know we are on an endeavour. The main form is a series of artful, usually long, sentences that combined make a fortified argument of considerable persuasiveness. Prose though is about the last thing we have before us. It is Auden's 'voluble discourse' in portable form.
Although not a beat poem, it is comradely with Ginsberg's aesthetic of the poem as measure of breath. Breath in the Steele poem is commanding like an original lecture, enspiriting like a true sermon, propulsive like a perfect dinner conversation. No matter what the extent of the references or the shape of the wit in a Steele poem, we can always be assured of cogency. The effort is worth the time. It provides a classical education and reminds the reader of how accessible and enjoyable such an education can be. It expresses the challenge of an idea, but once think it is all intellect, you will be taken by surprise with emotional subtleties.
If a poem can be called transatlantic Melburnian, then this is it. It is a gift, the construction of an intricate argument with fewest words. It is like John Donne: the apposite yet unexpected use of image and phrase, always at the service of the argument. It has Donne's showiness, his complexity, as well as his reality checks.
Perhaps two examples of different types will explain things in another way.
The 'picture' poems of recent times, mostly responses to canvases, suit the poet's natural mode. In 'Canaletto' he analyses one of the artist's great Venetian vistas, opening,
A Venice of water and fire, of earth and air -
that, you'll agree, is the world he makes,
the four concerted as though to a private music.
The reader is