Blame Vermeer
By Vincent O’SullivanVUP, NZ$25 | Reviewed by Simon Sweetman
I SOMETIMES find Vincent O’Sullivan’s world too oblique; not instantly accessible. The title poem in this latest collection is a classic example, a strange wee story that seems to exist in its own world, occupying its own space. I find that rather cool – even if I don’t always understand exactly what’s going on. It’ll keep me coming back to the poems – a clever trick from a seasoned hand, no doubt? But just as often I’m dazzled by his superb, abrupt images. Short, simple statements that expertly paint the picture: “Wind pretty much tatters what’s left/of the puddle in the driveway” begins the poem that takes its title from that opening line. Facing it on the next page is the poem ‘Sizing up the bones’ where O’Sullivan documents “A goat’s skeleton like the struts of a small hut”. In the poem ‘New Year’s Eve, Carterton’, one reads of how “A moth quivers, the ecstasy perhaps/of not being here tomorrow’. This is the perfect description – yet it’s stated as a near-question of pure opinion, but it sums up the situation, creates a universal image.
At his best, O’Sullivan’s writing adheres to technique, he happily acknowledges his scholarly background and yet he manages to simultaneously break free and suggest a simplistic beauty, referencing poets such as Ezra Pound (particularly with the two-line “offcut” which goes by the title ‘Chrysalis’: “A train enters a tunnel./Comes out as sky”.) Nice, playful surprises bump against rigid, conservative tales (“He’d endured so much,/by the grace of God.”) Sometimes the poems have an instantly cinematic feel in their observation, as in ‘Travel Bug’: “You see them on the way from the airport/the children splashing in the burst hydrant”. Other times, the worldly observation pertains entirely to the world in which O’Sullivan lives: “200 years back I could have said it was like sunrise/ on a Welsh mountain, you illuminated counties/from where you stood./That I hadn’t been to Wales was not important”. And then of course there are lines that come from – and stay in? – entirely the world of the poems: “Make the most of it while you can,/my girls – of what the Muses give you”.
Blame Vermeer backs up O’Sullivan’s 2005 Montana prize-winning collection, Nice Morning For It, Adam, and importantly shows that over forty years after his first published selection of poems, O’Sullivan remains on top of his game, following his voice in and around various poetic vistas, committed to presenting his voice – in different factions – through, to reference one of his own ideas in this book, “fictions by the handful”.
I enjoy the fact that Vincent O’Sullivan’s career as an academic, short-story writer, novelist, dramatist, critic, essayist, biographer and poet remains entirely in tact and that each separate vestige of writing continues informs the other. Mini-biographies appear in Vermeer, poems that dazzle with their flare for language, taking in the measured eye of a fine short-story writer, the awareness of a critic, the details of a fine novelist and essayist and the strict awareness of form that comes with being a continual teacher – and therefore eternal student – of the game. As anyone who has read O’Sullivan’s 1996 novel, Believers To The Bright Coast will know, when on form, he has a painterly eye for creating vivid scenic detail. And allows his characters to react as much to the setting as to each other. The same is true in these brief poems. And, though dry in tone, he also enjoys a laugh: “She is wearing clothes so skin-tight/varnish is the word that comes to mind”.
