the prism and the rose and the late poems
the prism and the rose and the late poems by Schaeffer Lemalu. Compound Press (2024). RRP: $30.00. PB, 80pp. ISBN: 9781991154170. Reviewed by Tulia Thompson.
One way to approach Sāmoan-Lebanese poet Schaeffer Lemalu’s (1983–2021) posthumous collection the prism and the rose and the late poems is via his attention to the visual. Lemalu was also a painter with a BFA from Elam School of Fine Arts (and dearly loved within the Auckland art scene and beyond, according to those who knew him) who keenly explored the relationship between imagery and language, the interplay between painting and inspiration:
‘and into my mind
came a grid
lines going
this way
others
going that way
they looked like innocence’
Much of this extract is a direct quote from artist Agnes Martin, with other lines lifted from or paraphrased from her art dealer Arne Glimcher’s TateShots series. Agnes Martin is an indelible artist, known for being part of the abstract expressionism movement that emerged during the mid last century (predominantly New York City, USA) that influenced the development of minimalism.
Another segment retells a moment between Martin and Glimcher’s 11-year-old granddaughter about a vase of roses. Martin holds a rose behind her back:
‘Is this rose still beautiful isabelle
yes the rose is still beautiful
yes the beauty is in your mind’
Lemalu uses the word ‘after’ in his line ‘after patrick lundberg and richard bryant’ to signal a much looser, metaphoric relationship between the works of these two contemporary artists, of Agnes Martin, and also his own poetic and creative practice using words and image. Patrick Lundberg and Richard Bryant are prominent Aotearoa New Zealand artists whose contemporary artworks have a relationship to minimalism and abstraction. When poets use the convention ‘after’ in poetry, it is usually to signal their use of the earlier poet’s form or content, as a means of reference.
Lemalu’s extensive use of direct quotes and pop culture references sometimes means that imagery doubles back uncomfortably. In “neo” he writes the superb, ‘search for the perfect blossom / and you wont find it / they are all perfect.’ I imagine the laden branches of warm pink blossoms that I once saw in springtime Vancouver, then feel disheartened upon realising that it is a reworked quote from The Last Samurai with a serious long-haired Tom Cruise and a serious case of what theorist Edward Said would call ‘Orientalism.’ I am left with the aftertaste of cherry cola.
When faced with the difficult decision of how best to represent Lemalu’s work, Chris Holdaway at Compound Press decided to publish the 50-page-long “the prism and the rose a digital manifesto” alongside the poems that Lemalu emailed to people in his last year. ‘Schaeffer’s preferred method of publication was to email his poems as they were composed directly to those he wished to see them,’ Holdaway noted in The Spinoff. Lemalu had previously published small chapbooks Sleeptalker and Sleeptalker 2, which he gave to people he knew. And in his introduction to the prism and the rose and the late poems, American poet and essayist Donald Revell explains how Lemalu initially contacted him because of his love of the poets of New York School, which in turn sparked a regular correspondence where they shared poems via email. Revell notes that he found an ‘unguarded insouciance combined with a genuine sense of spiritual urgency’ in Lemalu’s work that speaks to the New York School poets, who were also heavily influenced by abstract expressionism.
“like a peacock fanning its eyes” is about Theodore Kacynski, also known as the Unabomber. His greatest fear was ‘forgetting / the forest trails birdsong autumn falling in warm colours before his eyes’. An appreciation of beauty and desire for nature is made discomforting through the psyche of the domestic terrorist. Kacynski’s manifesto was about the evils of technology, and Lemalu uses this to playfully explore whether digital beauty is still beautiful:
‘we walk into a noel leemings in the hamilton hub stoned
the tvs are so thin sharp and crisp
these sunsets look more real than they do outside with just my eyes looking
at them
i love that pink cloud over the cathedral floating past
a painter once pointed to a hue in the sky
and told me theyd never seen it in a painting’
Lemalu’s work is strongest when he combines detailed everyday moments and drops into a sense of what is sacred. In “orange juice”, he describes finding a poetry collection by a Buddhist Monk, the best line highlighted on its back cover:
‘like a magpie spotting a silver thead of tinsle
in the grass
it read
theres no such thing as death’
Batman movies are a motif throughout the collection. Batman is made most tender in “why do we fall,” where Lemalu addresses a love who smoked too much: ‘you sounded like you wouldve as a little girl’. He then reflects with, ‘ill take off my mask if you will / i thought’. In the next stanza he listens to Eptesicus from the Batman Begins soundtrack: ‘i remember now / its at the end when they kiss / and she forgives him.’
One poem starts with ‘vespertilio / eptesicus /myotis’ that lists 12 different species of bat. I contemplate their small, dark shiny bodies and curving wings until it dawns on me that the species order is the same as the tracklist for Eptesicus (also a genus of Bats) composed by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard for the Batman Begins soundtrack.
The references to Batman turn the most twisting and dark in Lemalu’s “the prism and the rose a digital manifesto” where Nolan’s Batman runs up against direct quotes from other films. These quoted films include a horror about capitalism, They Live, as well as A Clockwork Orange, The Sound of Music, West Side Story, Taxi Driver, Full Metal Jacket, The Dark Knight, Batman Begins, Brief Encounter, Brazil and Seconds, alongside Donald Rumsfield’s statement about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction. I can’t help but wonder what Lemalu might make of current day Trump’s America, President Zelenky’s treatment in the Oval Office or Elon Musk at DOGE.
I watch Nolan’s The Dark Knight to try and grasp what Lemalu is exploring. It’s slick and smart with fast-paced action sequences that Nolan became renowned for, and that disturbing performance by Heath Ledger as The Joker. Batman has a shadow self, and goes too far. Batman and The Joker are a duality. For me it raised the familiar relationship between masculinity, and being masked and of violence, a thread which echoes through Lemalu’s work:
‘you want order in gotham
batman must take off his mask
and turn himself in’
Perhaps the words gather a weightiness because there is no possibility of Batman being unmasked. Even beyond the relationship between poet and reader, poetry is so often a conversation between poets. Poetry is talanoa. Talanoa is a pan-Pacific term for conversation or dialogue, in Pacific contexts often indicating the slow deliberations that might be reached gradually while sharing kava on a woven mat. Schaeffer Lemalu’s posthumous collection the prism and the rose and the late poems is a rich conversation.
Tulia Thompson is of Fijian, Tongan and Pākehā descent. She has a PhD in Sociology and a Master of Creative Writing (Hons) from the University of Auckland. Her fiction and poetry is published in Niu Voices: Contemporary Pacific Fiction 1, Overland, Blackmail Press and JAAM. Josefa and the Vu, a fantasy adventure for 8–12-year-olds, was published by Huia in 2007.