ABSTRACT
Allen Curnow was one of the great poets of the 20th century. He attained that status in his late poetry, which can be dated from 1972. The author has set the stage for Trees, Effigies, Moving Objects, it marked a revolution in Curnow’s poetic output. Curnow’s relationship with Betty was faltering by 1946, when “Curnow met a woman called Norah College and seriously considered leaving the marriage”. Curnow’s poetic production had always been intermittent, with bursts of published poetry emerging from a steady craftsman-like activity that emphasized both a sense of completion and very high editorial standards; he was constantly working on drafts prompted by some inner perplexity but was unwilling to “repeat what he had done before, or what others had done” and his production was often exiguous. Trees, Effigies combines Curnow’s new sense that the myths by which people live are provisional with his studious observation of subjectivity in perception.
