‘No Other World’: Essays on the life-work of Don Maclennan
Edited by Dan Wylie and Craig Mackenzie
Published by Print Matters
‘No Other World’: Essays on the life-work of Don Maclennan
Edited by Dan Wylie and Craig Mackenzie
Published by Print Matters
It is difficult to classify this text. Is it literary biography? Is it literary criticism? Is it a bibliographic resource? Is it homage and commemoration?
Indeed, this collection comprises all of these categories resulting in a text which is informative, moving, challenging, inspiring and above all sincerely appreciative of a great man, poet and teacher. The collection covers biographical essays beginning with Shirley Maclennan’s stoical and humorous account of her husband’s life in Section One, tributes in Section Two, critical responses including close readings of selected poems in Section Three, and a bibliography and overview of manuscripts in Section Four.
There is a depth and range of material covered here, from the scholarly and esoteric, to the frankly personal and pragmatic, which renders it appealing to a wide assortment of readers. It is the kind of text you read once and then spend the rest of your life dipping into; much like one does with Don’s collections of poetry.
Each contribution is well-considered, thoroughly researched, and authentically expressed, resonating with the effects of Don’s ‘lit presence’ – a phrase Wylie borrows from George Steiner to describe Don in the Introduction. In each contribution there is evidence of Don’s unique influence. The overall sense one gets from these essays is that the contributors and the editors were not just writing about Don, but living out, in some sense, what Don inspired in them, in all who had the honour of knowing him – the ability to
reveal the arc of light
that touches earth
and makes us sing (Maclennan 2006: 73)
In Section Two, Brendan Robinson’s “A Letter to Don Maclennan” reveals how profoundly Don has shaped the character of the author, but moreover, Don’s epistolary expertise has inspired Brendan’s own lyrical letter to Long Ear. This literary device, Don’s use of the letter form in poetry, is revisited in Mariss Everitt’s close reading of Don’s poem cycle A Letter to William Blake, in which Everitt examines Don’s use of the archetypal trope of the journey or quest to describe “spiritual catharsis” and “apprehensions of infinity” (Everitt 2012: 174).
All the essays in Section Three are accomplished and nuanced, and collectively they represent a body of criticism long overdue, as Mackenzie’s opening contention so thoroughly historicises. An unusual perspective is offered in this section by Christine Lucia and Michael Blake’s two-part essay on Don’s passion for music – “Don Maclennan and Music”. Not only are we reminded of the musicality of Don’s poetry, what Blake describes as “… its shapes, its rhythms, its rise and fall” (2012: 146), but we also learn of his more formal appreciation of music and of his successful collaborations with musicians.
For the scholar, the final section, the bibliography of primary and secondary works, and overview compiled by Andrew Martin, Lynne Grant and Mariss Everitt is a valuable resource, which will in time hopefully expand. Mackenzie’s question “What, then, finally, of Don Maclennan’s place in South African letters?” (2012: 105) is surely answered by the publication of this remarkable text.
