Excerpt from The Harrowing of Balmain
An excerpt from The Harrowing Of Balmain
A Romp, By Kevin Hart and Alan Gould
Dedicated to A.D. Hope
Note by Alan Gould
‘The Harrowing of Balmain’ was written by Kevin Hart and myself, begun at a poetry event at Macquarie University in August 1975, completed over the next few months, then published in the weekend journal, Nation Review, over four consecutive weeks in March/April 1976. Kev and I had great glee composing it, and I have a chapter in my present novel, The Poets’ Stairwell, where I base events on the inception of the thing. Broadly, Kev composed Books 1 and 3, and I composed Books 2 and 4. But our imaginations and efforts were so interleaved that there are many parts of Books 1 and 3 that have my imprint, and ditto for Kev in 2 and 4.
Readers of the poem might recognise references to various locations around the bohemian suburb of Balmain (in Sydney), as well as to actual Australian magazines of the ’70s, and actual Australian (and occasionally American) poets.
At this time there existed a certain fashion for highlighting a word or phrase with apostrophes to suggest irony or ambiguity of tone. Kev and I picked up on this trope and went to town on it.
Synopsis: The action takes place in modern times at a pub in Balmain — The Stolen Apple — and on the streets of that suburb. Various paladins of the modern movement in Australian poetry, including the poem’s hero, have met to discourse on weighty matters and meet with the arch-prophet of the moderns. An argument is described, a procession followed, and then, in Book 3 the arch-villain arrives, causing mischief with his equable dismissals, his challenges and a certain careless manner as to who he sits on. Vitriol flows, loathing intensifies, reinforcements arrive for the villain, a desperate kidnapping and chase then ensue, imperilling the life of a venerable Australian poet. The drama is resolved happily by the intervention of a certain pastoral poet, a watery climax, and the persistence of the New Poetry movement in Australia from below the harbour waters.
From Book the Fourth
... Sweet Muse, for half a mo prolong your visit:
Calliope or Clio — which one is it?
It’s hard to see, for such obscurity
Befogs each poem in New Poetry.
Where have you gone? Please don’t desert us now:
Resolve suspense, though not just anyhow,
Direct our pens, that guide the fates of all,
The minds that please, the scribblers that appal,
So that, before we tire the patient barmen,
Each one will find a safe — or sorry — Amen.
The sides await, as each takes up his mark
And hones his gleaming metaphors. Then hark!
A voice unflagging rises to the roof,
The vibrant baritone of D. Malouf
Then Page conjoins, as clear as Hunter wine,
And Shapcott next, with stanzas just as fine.
Then Beaver starts, with Letters, Lauds, and Odes,
Proficient in both new and older modes.
Now Dobson sings, ‘Aere perennius... ’,
Of ancient myth and wise Pausanias.
Now Wright, her words like brilliant points of light
As seen across a continent at night.
The throng increases and, as if the fates
Were suddenly appeased, the murk abates,
And drinkers that had welcomed Tranter’s crew
First belch, then find their singing voices too.
They harmonize with gold and silver tongues
And all their notes rise up on burning rungs,
Till street by street, and house by house there starts
A weird and sorry wailing; from all hearts
The blanket of despair begins to rise,
And stress-less poems fly toward the skies.
Obscure and esoteric books of verse
Unstick themselves, dissolve, and then disperse.
The bookshops shed their charlatans and rogues,
Their propaganda, melts, then disembogues,
While manifestos rush down every drain —
And thus takes place THE HARROWING OF BALMAIN.
The song subsides, and Murray’s words are terse:
‘The Muse that bellows only blight and curse
‘Is henceforth banished. Go and learn to deal
‘With life and language justly. That’s my spiel!’
Our crew attend, downcast upon the deck:
Alas! Poor Hutch is quite a concrete wreck,
And even Bobbie Daz is now forlorn:
But not John Tranter, who replies with scorn:
‘Windy talk, Murray, talk that you’ll “regret”,
‘Your antique gang stands squarely in my “debt”.
‘It’s I who brought the foreign Muses home,
‘And cleaned your ancient smoke with modern foam.
‘It’s I who weekly sift the rhyming mob
‘For U.S. influence — a thankless “job”:
‘It’s I who raised the New Poetic’s “gate”
‘Beneath which pass the sixth and seventh rate.
‘Take heed, for all this I can do again
‘In Brisbane, if no longer in Balmain.’
He shook his fist, but no-one there was moved
For Murray’s heavy sentence was approved.
So, seeing eyes were blank, the frantic man
Resolved upon his yet more frantic plan.
His face took on the wicked look of Shiva,
And in its gaze — there stood the hapless Beaver.
‘Secure him “boys”, don’t listen to his fuss,
‘Whatever he might say, he’s one of “us”.
‘His name will draw attention to our plight
‘And show the world the horrors that we write...
‘(Of which we write, I should have “bloody” said,
‘(Their caterwaul’s played havoc in my “head”).
‘The road to hell awaits the hell-bent few,
‘So cobblers, “Les” to you and all your crew!’
He shoulders Beaver’s most unwilling weight
Despite the protest from his kidnapped freight,
And through the tradesman’s door, then down the street
Careering like a bull, he makes retreat.
Within the pub a long, dumbfounded pause:
This escapade defies all reason’s laws.
‘Is this a farce, or Hollywood burlesque?
‘Whichever way it’s utterly grotesque,’
MacDonald murmurs, though his speech is drowned,
For Kris is baying like a crazy hound:
‘The New Illiterati live!’ his shot —
Then after Tranter at a turkey-trot.
Now nimble R ick, and Hutch, and Nigel R.
Abandon Bob in favour of his car,
Where Tranter’s strapping Beaver to his seat.
The Dazzler keeps his cool; with sentence sweet
Intones, ‘I bless you all and may you seek
‘This road of ours, or one that’s just as bleak.’
Then to his car he runs, but like his verse,
He tries a forward gear and finds reverse.
The choral hosts are dumb, their brains amazed
That Art could spawn a plot so vain and crazed.
They stand illumined in that eerie light
That bathes the earth when storms amass their might,
And loom in silence high above the woods
Where apple-stealing youngsters share their goods.
As though he were their spirit, Murray’s eyes
Reflect the seething turmoils of such skies:
Now dark as cauldrons, now erupting fire:
His words like thunder stir the bardic choir.
‘Perfidious age, when dabblers dare defame
‘A poet’s voice and hijack his good name!
‘Friend Bruce — ’ he pauses, while across his brow
Fly gusts of elemental rage, ‘I vow,
‘Before I see your poems in the mud
‘I’ll scan their prosy bones and rhyme their blood.’
This fearful covenant the hosts repeat,
But Murray’s out and half-way down the street
Where Adamson’s cortege now disappears
Impeded by those problematic gears.
The chase is on, as all the hosts pursue
Down Beattie Street, and then up Montague,
The desperado team. All eyes engage
On nimble Shapcott and athletic Page,
Both sure of stride, who ply their thrusting feet
And catch the lurching car at Darling Street.
It’s here would Murray’s vow have been enforced
But for the gas from Adamson’s exhaust,
That vomits clouds of gritty, noxious verse
And stops our athletes dead: they splutter, curse,
And must retire. Once more with smarting eyes
All see the verbal carbons foul the skies,
While cokey syntax settles everywhere
Embogging people’s wits in tarry air.
The car proceeds, a huge ill-smelling shark
Through Loyalty Square and then up Gladstone Park,
While powerless to save their kidnapped man
The poets trail, but dare not seize the van.
In Murray’s heart there enters now a doubt:
‘How long before their toxic verse runs out?’
He flings this question to the strobe-lit skies:
His answer comes — ‘Unlimited supplies.’
The future’s black, and Beaver’s fate seems sealed
But language holds one further ace concealed...
— Book the Fourth, lines 1-134
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