Reconsidering Bill Pearson's essay 'Fretful Sleepers' as part of the 1996 Auckland University Winter Lecture series, Linda Smith admitted that perhaps the only part of his essay that she truly understood was the last line: 'London, 1952.' In this self-deprecating way, she neatly drew attention to the physical and intellectual disjunction that looms as large as the 'Almighty Norm' in that particular essay. Revisiting Allen Curnow's Poetry and Language, I feel drawn to a similar conclusion, except that the part I truly claim to understand is slightly more substantial and appears on the title-page--'Christchurch: at the Caxton Club Press, 1935'. (1) In some ways, Poetry and Language presents the inverse of Pearson's essay: instead of an essay that ostensibly offers New Zealand as its subject while physically demonstrating the opposite, Poetry and Language clearly states that it was produced in Christchurch, New Zealand, and yet, except for a solitary mention in the final section, there is little in its content or presentation to suggest that its subject is New Zealand. It is a manifesto. Its stark layout and design attest to that, but despite its neutral guise, I would argue, it has proved to be a manifesto for New Zealand literature, even though its author may not have conceived it as such.
