Ambiguity and ambivalence in R.A.K. Mason

Close reading of poems - except in the classroom - has become rather unfashionable as an academic discipline. In the case of the New Zealand poet R.A.K. Mason, the result has been unfortunate. It is really no exaggeration to say that we have hardly yet begun to consider just what these poems mean. They are far more enigmatic - and far less easily typecast - than discussions of individual examples by J.E. Weir or Charles Doyle (Mason's major critics so far) would suggest.'