Poetry
An Incorrigible Music
Allen Curnow · 1979
Synopsis
A fish caught on a hook bleeds in a pool between the rocks. In the cathedral of Florence, in 1478, conspirators assassinate Giuliano de' Medici; in 1978, the Italian statesman Aldo Moro is kidnapped and then killed. Between these poems pass herons at the water's edge and poisoned snails. From one text to the next the murderers and the victims return, and the poet suggests that each of us is both.
Context
The collection appeared in 1979 from Auckland University Press. It draws on places in the country, Karekare beach above all, and contains a sequence on Renaissance Italy, In the Duomo, as well as Moro Assassinato, written after the assassination of Aldo Moro by the Red Brigades, which occurred during the author's second stay in Italy. The opening poem takes its title from a question in the book of Job about Leviathan, and the caught fish there figures both Christ and the monster.
Who it is for
About fifty pages, never translated into French. It is worth knowing what the conspiracy of 1478 and the Moro affair were.
Prizes and reception
Critics see in it his darkest exploration of human violence, and the sequence of poems on Aldo Moro is thought to be one of his strongest long poems.
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