Reference Points
Stranger within • Generation gap • Midwinter spring • Silent revolution • Trees, travelling • Under the wave • Magnolia • Augury • Four elements • Peacocks • Old house • Rainbird • Apocalypse
Histories
Historian • Portraits • The janitor • Ancestors • Yesterday's loss • Counter-revolution • Prayer of an elder • Robert Lowell • Social control • Waitomo • Parihaka • Rongopai
Myths and Emblems
Counter talk • The empty chair • The candle • Wave and shell • Increase and multiply • November 1978 • Rumpelstiltskin • Thumbelina • The swineherd • A Japanese tale • Solstice
Source: Out of Season: Poems. Wellington; New York: Oxford University Press, 1980
Electronic source: Out of Season: a TEI-conformant transcription
All poems © W. H. Oliver
Out of Season
Poems by W. H. Oliver
“W. H. Oliver's last volume of poems, Fire Without Phoenix, was published in 1957 – ‘…at that time his gently elegaic, finely modulated lines seemed to hold out the promise of a brilliant career.’
“The poet returns to publication with a different voice. Complexity and elegance mark this collection, but the poems are shadowed by harsher perceptions than those of the younger writer.
“The author is professor of history at Massey University, and his concerns are often those of the historian. But he writes too the moving introspective lyrics that open the volume, and the fairy-tale parables that close it.
“A fine prose stylist, W. H. Oliver moves with assurance back to the writing of verse.” —the volume’s blurb, which appeared on the inside front cover