Riding the Pendulum - Poems 1961-69

Oxford University Press, Wellington, 1973. A5 size, 58 pages. Secondhand wear to cover, including vertical creasing on front cover next to spine, previous owner's scrubbed out name at top of front endpaper.

Thi si KO Arvidson's first collection. The poems strike notes of loss, foreboding, suffering: nearly all demonstrate the author's gift fro teh evocative image, the haunting phrase, the delicate cadence; and all through is revealed a natural lyricism which is chastened until it acquires, in the 'Takahe Creek' sequence, for example, qualities of tragedy. But for all that these are not sombre poems, and the pervasive idealism running through them is tempered by an equally pervasive irony which moderates the ideal, rather than destroying it, and sets it in some clear relation to reality.

These are the poems of a distinguished opet, one who has never been inclined to publish anything second-rate or not fully formed. Above all they are poems of substance, and their themes are of real human significance.