84-484
By Geoff CochraneVUP, NZ$25 | Reviewed by Amy Brown
IF YOU’RE already a Geoff Cochrane fan, his latest work will not be disappointing. Cochrane’s relaxed precision, stunning vocabulary and formidable concision are all happily present in 84-484, a book full of memories, characters, Wellington, self-portraits and riddles.
The title was Cochrane’s grandparents’ phone number in the 1950s and the poem of the same name is one of the strongest in the collection. Deceptively straight-forward, it begins with a sentence of prose acting as an invocation, or at least explanation, of a memory, which was triggered while watching Antiques Roadshow. In ten sections, Cochrane weaves in and out of prose, accumulating snippets of recollection until a narrative, driven by memories of Eileen, his grandmother, appears. This could be read as a straight and poignant account of his relationship with Eileen (“a troubled woman. Troubled and troubling and troublesome. An aging Ophelia determined to remain dismayed by sex. By sex in particular and life in general.”), but for a clue in the third section – the title Cochrane “almost chose: “Dubious Truths””. Behind the beguiling details and apparently autobiographical content of the title poem and the book as a whole, this understudy title plays an important role, reminding readers of the unreliability of memory, especially in the condensed, expertly constructed form of Cochrane’s poetry. Throughout the book, readers are repeatedly reminded of what a filtered system remembering is. For example, the first stanza of ‘War Poem’ –
“The spilt wine, the black cards
convince me: anything
processed by memory
is fiction.”
acts as a warning. Carefully chosen details, structure and pace can only make a history interesting, not real. This all may seem a bit obvious – of course poetry, or writing of any sort, will never be a facsimile of reality (unless that reality is other poetry or other pieces of writing). But, it’s tempting in this collection, with its convincing portraits and anecdotes, to forget how reconstituted the facts in each poem actually are. ‘Intelligence Officer Patrick White’s Monkey’ and ‘Mixed Nuts’ with their tantalising fragments of story, are so vividly and cryptically arranged that each stanza, paradoxically, becomes more believable.
The uncharacteristically long ‘Invisible Solids’, sprawling over four pages, works in a similar way, cataloguing a combination of autobiography and snatches of non-fiction, loosely unified, and consequently fictionalised, by a common theme: art. Artists are another recurring theme of this collection. ‘Chemotherapy’ gives a touching but unsentimental snapshot of Nigel Cox’s last birthday, and ‘Parentheses’ the ultimate poem of 84-484 contains a moving and humorous story about Brian Bell – “Brian of the essay “Are New Zealanders Ugly?”/ Brian of the bombastic raves, the circus-barker’s/ strut and Chaplinesque jacket” – which provides the collection with the very satisfying closing lines, “(But Brian was a very serious proposition. A very/ serious moral proposition.)”
84-484 is a full and distinctive collection, brimming with stories, skill and knowledge peculiar to this poet. If this were to be Cochrane’s last book (which I certainly hope it won’t) it’d make, I think, a good substitute for a memoir.
