I wanted a quirky New Zealand poem, and I chose “The Magpies.”
The poem
Read “The Magpies” at Te Ara, the Encyclopedia of New Zealand.
Te Ara reproduces the poem courtesy of Denis Glover’s estate. I haven’t copied it here, but the link above takes you to the full text.
First reading
What a sudden, sad twist to a poem that starts out like a nursery rhyme.
I’ve heard these birds. To me, their call is much more melodious than “quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle” makes it seem on the page.
I lived in New Zealand for a decade, and this feels like a very Kiwi poem: a light and breezy delivery of something dark and somber.
Hearing it
The same Te Ara page includes an archival recording of Glover reading the poem.
Glover’s reading entirely changes the feel of the poem for me. It is slow and drawling, and the magpies’ call feels as if it shifts along with the fate of Tom and Elizabeth.
What I learned
“The Magpies” first appeared in 1941 in Recent Poems, a Caxton Press anthology of four poets. Glover was also its printer and publisher. A review in the New Zealand Listener that August called the ruined farm an “all too familiar rural pattern.”
Tom and Elizabeth weren’t based on one particular couple. Glover called them “generalised.” He based them on the small farmers whose struggles he had seen around Canterbury and while mustering near Lake Tekapo. The Depression was probably in the background. Many small farmers were struggling to stay on their land.
Allen Curnow later remembered Glover hearing magpies on the way to his family’s bach near Leithfield. He said Glover arrived repeating “quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle,” then sat down to write.
Australian magpies aren’t native to New Zealand. They were introduced in the nineteenth century to control pasture pests. Their call became a familiar sound in the New Zealand countryside.
Rereading it
Of course, the sound of the magpies threading through the poem is memorable. Glover’s slow delivery sticks with me too.
But the final refrain changes from what the magpies said to what the magpies say. That changed the poem for me from the story of one couple on one farm into something about how life will always be.
The twist and the wording also remind me of “Tarantella”, which I read last week.