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Home>>Poetry>>Poetry Collections>>The Book of My Enemy>>Verse Letters>>To  Margaret Olley

To Margaret Olley

Picture
To Margaret Olley on the Occasion of her Retrospective Exhibition in Sydney, October 1996
​

Margaret, the Jeu de paume
As it used to be back when
All the painters of light
In that lilting dawn patrol
Gathered and felt at home
Is in your mind and art – 
A dream-time pleasure dome
With the décor done just right
In a Tuileries born again
As a fairground for the heart,
A health farm for the soul:
Montparnasse and Montmartre
Rolled into one venue
With dancing every night – 
That’s how we think of you.

Bonnard, Degas, Derain,
Matisse, Renoir, Manet,
Monet, Vuillard, Cézanne – 
They’re all there in your frame,
But you have drawn on them all
For something beyond themselves:
A multiple interplay
No American football game
Could match for complexity – 
Or rainbow’s swirling veil
Backed up by its waterfall
For tense frailty
Spun off from inner steel.

The crockery on your shelves,
The posters on every wall
Of that magic Paddington house,
On your canvass shift around
In a permanent minuet
Of colour arranged like sound,
Keeping their essences
While giving themselves away
In a blissful synthesis –
A fusing of separateness
Delicious as a kiss.

There’s alchemy in your hands
The way Toulouse-Lautrec 
At an artist’s ball one night
Played barman and mixed tall drinks
Of every colour combined:
Pure spirits in vivid bands,
Striped towers of pigments and inks,
Their effect was dynamite.
A poet went out of his mind,
A collector died of fright,
The hostess is still a wreck – 
The evening, nevertheless,
For exalting the sense of sight,
Was hailed as a success.

We love the Impressionists.
Well, Goering loved them too,
But acted out the desire
Differently from you.
He ticked them off on lists,
He loaded them on to trains,
He buried them down salt mines –
Yet in one way you and he,
Though he lacked your manners and brains,
Thought on the same lines:
You both saw that entire
Upsurge of human joy
In its timeless unity,
And couldn’t repress the urge
To make the whole thing yours.
A greedy boy with a gun,
An art-struck bum in a rush,
He did it, but not for long.
You did it for keeps with a brush
And the patience that waits like a nun
Behind her life’s closed doors
For the love of God to emerge
From a bowl of fruit like a song.

Margaret, with you the quest
For a National Identity
Uniquely Australia’s own
Stands at last for all to see
Revealed as a mare’s nest.
By going it alone
With not one home-grown theme –
Except our feeling free,
Even if we offend,
To hold ourselves apart
And choose what we may dream – 
Your representational art
That represents us all
Reminds us, in the swell
Of our millennial pride
And its raucous picture books,
That nothing counts in the end
But the individual,
Whose eternal right it is
To swim against the tide
With strokes specifically hers – 
Spectral ripples that blend
Intoxicatingly
Into something that looks
Wonderful on the wall.

Reviews of The Book of My Enemy

The Age
Independent
Telegraph, Alan Marshall
Telegraph, John Gross
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  • Home
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  • Essays
    • Visions Before Midnight
    • The Crystal Bucket
    • Glued To The Box
    • The Metropolitan Critic
    • At the Pillars of Hercules
    • As of This Writing
    • The Meaning of Recognition >
      • Introduction
      • Polanski and the Pianist
      • Fantasy in the West Wing
      • Pushkin's Deadly Gift
      • Great Sopranos of Our Time
      • A Memory Called Malouf
      • Bing Crosby's Hidden Art
      • Larkin Treads the Boards
      • The Iron Capital of Bruno Schulz
      • Criticism a la Frank Kermode
      • Fast Talking Dames
      • Rough Guides to Shakespeare
      • General Election Sequence 2001
      • Primo Levi and the Painted Veil
      • A Big Boutique of Australian Essays
      • Cyrano on the Scaffold
      • A Nightclub in Bali
      • Aldous Huxley Then and Now
      • A Man Called Peter Porter
      • Philip Roth's Alternative America
      • The Miraculous Vineyard of Australian Poetry
      • Save Us From Celebrity
    • The Revolt of the Pendulum >
      • The Question of Karl Kraus
      • John Bayley's Daily Bread
      • Kingsley and the Women
      • Canetti Man of Mystery
      • Camille Paglia Burns for Poetry
      • The Guidebook Detectives
      • Zuckerman Uncorked
      • The Flight from the Destroyer
      • Saying Famous Things
      • Insult to the Language
      • The Perfectly Bad Sentence
      • Happiness Writes White
      • All Stalkers Kill
      • Best Eaten Cold
      • White Shorts of Leni Reifenstahl
      • Made in Britain, More or Less
      • Movie Criticism in America
      • Show Me the Horror
      • The Measure of A.D. Hope
      • Robert Hughes Remembers
      • Modern Australian Painting
      • On Diamond Jim McClelland
      • The Voice of John Anderson
      • Niki Lauda Wins Going Slowly
      • Damon Hill's Bravest Day
      • Jonathan James-Moore
      • Ian Adam
      • Pat Kavanagh
      • Starting with Sludge
    • Guest Writers >
      • Zoe Williams
      • Russell Davies
      • Bryan Appleyard
      • Marina Hyde
      • Bruce Beresford
      • Michael Frayn
  • Poetry
    • Poetry Collections >
      • Fin de Fiesta
      • Injury Time
      • Sentenced to Life >
        • Japanese Maple
        • Sentenced to Life
        • Procedure for Disposal
        • Leçons des ténèbres
        • Driftwood Houses
        • Event Horizon
        • Neuland
        • Echo Point
        • Change of Domicile
        • Holding Court
        • Too Much Light
        • Nature Programme
        • My Latest Fever
        • Nina Kogan's Geometrical Heaven
        • The Emperor's Last Words
        • Winter Plums
      • Nefertiti in the Flak Tower >
        • Whitman and the Moth
        • The Falcon Growing Old
      • Angels over Elsinore
      • The Book of My Enemy >
        • Recent Verse
        • Verse Letters
      • Opal Sunset
      • Other Passports >
        • Recent Verse >
          • The Book of My Enemy has been Remaindered
        • Parodies etc.
        • Earlier Verse
        • Verse Diaries
      • Fan Mail >
        • To Russell Davies: a letter from Cardiff
        • To Martin Amis: a letter from Indianapolis
        • To Pete Atkin: a letter from Paris
        • To Prue Shaw: a letter from Cambridge
        • To Tom Stoppard: a letter from London
        • To Peter Porter: a letter to Sydney
    • Epic Poems >
      • The River in the Sky
      • Gate of Lilacs
      • The Divine Comedy >
        • Hell - Cantos 1-3
        • Purgatory - Cantos 1-3
        • Heaven - Cantos 1-3
      • Poem of the Year
    • Books About Poetry >
      • Somewhere Becoming Rain
      • Poetry Notebook >
        • Listening for the Flavour
        • Five Favourite Poetry Books
        • Velvet Shackles
        • Meeting MacNiece
        • The Donaghy Negotiation
    • Poetry Readings
    • Articles on Poetry
    • Back from The Web
    • Guest Poets >
      • Daniel Brown
      • Liane Strauss
      • Les Murray
      • Peter Porter
      • Alan Jenkins
      • Stephen Edgar
      • John Stammers
      • Simon Barraclough
      • Isobel Dixon
      • Christian Wiman
      • Olivia Cole
      • Judith Beveridge
      • Peter Goldsworthy
      • Kapka Kassabova
  • Lyrics
    • My life in lyrics
    • Selected Song Lyrics >
      • Dancing Master
      • Faded Mansion
      • Have You got a Biro I can Borrow?
      • I Have to Learn to Live Alone Again
      • Hill of Little Shoes
      • History & Geography
      • I See the Joker
      • Laughing Boy
      • My Brother's Keeper
      • National Steel
      • Nothing Left to Say
      • Sessionman's Blues
      • Song for Rita
      • Stranger in Town
      • Sunlight Gate
      • The Egoist
      • The Eye of the Universe
      • The Ice Cream Man
      • Femme Fatale
      • The Master of the Revels
      • Thirty-year Man
      • Winter Spring
  • Video
    • Talking in the Library >
      • Series One
      • Series Two
      • Series Three
      • Series Four
      • Series Five
    • Postcards
    • CJ on YouTube
  • Radio
    • A Point Of View
    • Book Talk