Scarecrow suit

101 Poems by Ron Pretty Pitt Street Poetry $32 pb, 186 pp

Ron Pretty has published eight collections of poetry and five chapbooks over his long career. His latest and perhaps last book, 101 Poems, from Pitt Street Poetry’s Collected Works series, includes pieces from his previous collections, as well as some new work. We start with The Habitat of Balance (1988) and go all the way through to his most recent collection, The Left Hand Mirror (2017), before encountering a selection of new poems.

Pretty is a thoroughly assured poet. His command of the form is evident on every page, from the formal ‘Suburban Aubade’, a kind of domestic-mundane tableau of his partner and their baby, to the free verse in ‘Blue Movies’, where a mother reassures a passing stranger that the adopted child in the pram is in fact her own, regardless of their skin colour. Pretty seems as comfortable in the formal as he is in the free, but his free verse is especially good. ‘Blue Movies’ is a great example of his prowess. It begins: ‘Child in the pram, your dark face laughing up / at your pale mother, the barking dogs that mark / your slow perambulation down the street.’ We read slowly before coming to a crawl as we pronounce that multi-syllabic ‘per-am-bul-at-ion’. Pretty matches the rhythm of a casual stroll enjoyed by mother and daughter. Although simple, the juxtaposition of ‘dark’ and ‘pale’, the assonance and half-rhyme of ‘laughing’ and ‘barking’ which continues in a chain to ‘barking’ and ‘mark’, result in a coherent and affecting expression of experience that, in its simplicity, is satisfying in good poetry. It shows the confidence of a skilled poet. What is striking here and in many other places in this collection is Pretty’s plain language. Rarely does he lean on obscure references or complex language to create or convey meaning.

Narrative and biography are important in this book. The child and mother in ‘Blue Movies’ could have been characters invented to draw attention to the casual racism and suspicion that such a mother and child may encounter, but that is not the case. This poem is part of a sequence from his collection The Left Hand Mirror, where he recounts the adoption of his daughter from Sri Lanka and the complexity of transcultural adoption. This sequence details the initial legal proceedings, the poverty and disease his future child was born into, discussions with other citizens of the developed world on the ethics of such an adoption, and a reunion between his adopted child and her birth mother. Poetry for Pretty is deeply human and cathartic, and at the same time references and explores the universal.

The new pieces in this collection are just as accomplished and personal as Pretty’s earlier work. ‘Saving the World Feather by Feather’ describes four small boys, his grandchild among them, pretending to be warriors in the garden and accidentally saving sparrows from cats at the bird bath. In ‘Roller Coaster’, as his daughter feeds her child, Pretty reflects on his anxieties about raising a child and the similar anxieties his daughter must be having while raising hers. This personal journey – from the adoption of his daughter to her own experiences as a parent – works well here and in a few other places in the collection. It instils in readers an intimacy with the poet.

What is striking in this collection is Ron Pretty’s plain language

In the book’s final poem, ‘Late Afternoon’, Pretty recounts a conversation he had with his friend and fellow poet Jack Baker. They joke about each other’s appearance. Baker is ‘chemo-bald and skinny with it / though he reckons he’s podgy from the steroids’. Pretty is asked where he found ‘that scarecrow suit’. They joke through the trials of ageing. They are two ‘old blokes with their poems / and memories, happy as a couple of cows in mud’. This flippant, friendly exchange told in verse is a particularly appropriate way to finish the book, but the poem that most embodies Pretty’s objective in publishing this collection comes earlier.

‘Something Useful’ tells the story of a gold prospector; Pretty recounts what I assume is their imagined conversation. The prospector ‘dug though the grit in the bend in the creek, / sieved it and washed it, chased elusive nobs, / only ever found specks’. The search for gold is like the poet’s search for the right word. Just as the prospector sieves the grit to find gold, so too does the poet scribble a thousand lines to find the right one. The life of the prospector is hard but free. He has no ‘wife or kids to worry, no boss, / no tax, no shoes to shine or ties to bind me / to any place’. He is like the idyllic, itinerant poet, free to explore his art unbound. The metaphor continues. Gold is a ‘goddess’ who ‘asks a lot’, but mostly ignores our prayers, like every other bastard you pin your hopes on. She wears me out, she gives me nothin’, but still I keep on chasen’ her. A man’s gotta do somethin’ useful with his time

If these lines appeared in any other book, I might have read them as a critique of our Sisyphean working culture, or even an endorsement of that culture – we don’t need a boss to waste our time, and all ambition is ultimately futile. In this book, written at this stage of the poet’s life, I can’t help but feel that Pretty is reflecting on his journey through a life of literature, asking himself if it was all worthwhile. If the poetry in this collection is anything to go by, it certainly was. g

Sam Ryan is a PhD candidate at the University of Tasmania who researches poetry.