Leggott, Michele. Mezzaluna: Selected Poems. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2020.
Yesterday Michele gave us an advance copy of Mezzaluna, her selected poems, due out from Wesleyan University Press on the 12th of February, and from Auckland University Press on March 12th.
Here's the equally styly cover design for the New Zealand edition:
The book includes substantive selections from Michele's nine previous books of poems:
- Like This? The Caxton Press New Poetry Series. Ed. Michael Harlow. Christchurch: Caxton Press, 1988.
- Swimmers, Dancers. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1991.
- DIA. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1994.
- as far as I can see. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1999.
- Milk & Honey. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2005.
- Milk & Honey. 2005. Cambridge: Salt Publishing, 2006.
- Journey to Portugal. Collages by Gretchen Albrecht. Auckland: Holloway Press, 2007.
- Mirabile Dictu. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2009.
- Heartland. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2014.
- Northland. Auckland: Pania Press, 2010.
- Vanishing Points. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2017.
It's true that I did offer certain suggestions for inclusions at an early stage of the process, but Bronwyn and I also make our way into the acknowledgements as a result of Michele's chapbook Northland, which we published through Pania Press in 2010.
I have to hand it to the American designers of the book. They've done a wonderful job of navigating the difficult layouts of some of the earlier books - from the long lines of 'An Island' (Like This?, 1988); the collage layouts of 'Tigers' (Swimmers, Dancers, 1991) and 'Micromelismata' (DIA, 1994); all the way through to the prose poetry of 'The Fascicles' (Vanishing Points, 2017). They've also divided up the selections from each book with standardised pageworks, to facilitate moving from one to the next. It's an elegant solution to the problem of how to assert unity - this is all (now) one book - and variety - the fact that it consists of discrete sections from a number of other books, each ordered with at least as much care for precise detail.
I think it's safe to say that anyone with the slightest interest in Michele's poetry - or, really, New Zealand poetry in general - will have to buy this book. There are a few surprises here: an extra, previously uncollected poem in the Swimmers, Dancers section, as well as another new one at the end. The point for the enthusiast, though, will be to see how their own sense of Michele's poetic development over the past thirty years matches the graph of it provided by this, her own selection. Are there significant absences? Unexpected emphases? Certainly weighing the extravagant experimentation of a volume such as DIA against the more conventional layouts of her laureate verses, Mirabile Dictu, is greatly facilitated by being able to see, finally, these two seemingly disparate eras in her work together, side by side.
Michele never ceases to surprise. Her previous book, Vanishing Points (which I launched in October 2017), combined Borgesian game-playing with the growing perception of the sheer weight of history on these islands which has been gradually accreting in her writing over the past decade or so - certainly since Journey to Portugal (2007).
It was certainly high time for a backward glance o'er travel'd roads: 'Though much is taken, much abides.' More to the point, the next step forward requires a clear sense of where one has been - and now readers everywhere will be able to share Michele Leggott's own encephalogram of what she has gone through in composing these nine wonderful books.
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- category - New Zealand Poetry: Poetry
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