BOOKS BOOKS
BRASS BAND TO FOLLOW
by Bryan Walpert
Otago University Press — $27.50
We start with some ambiguity thanks to the title’s syntax: does the person speaking have a brass band to follow? Or are they letting us know that just behind them there is a brass band bringing up the rear? Either way, it is a description of middle age, a primary theme in this poetry collection.
Middle age is an ambiguous time. Currently it is a fluid thing, and you can find it defined as anything from the age of 40 to the age of 60 to the new 30-something.
We can’t miss the theme because the epigraphs make it clear and spell out another definition of middle age — the time when we realise our youthful yearnings will not be fulfilled. Surely that brass band should be here by now?
Many of these poems are also about themselves as much as they are about the world outside them. “Prompted” tells us it is a poem which requires 12 words to be included in it, among them “poplar” and “twigs”, so “obviously this is an autumnal poem”,
