[In the following review, Toerien offers a positive assessment of Die hand vol vere.]

A selection of Breyten Breytenbach's poetry made by his friend and academic Ampie Coetzee has the disarming title A Hand Full of Feathers, an Afrikaans idiom for empty-handedness and one which the author has used on several occasions in earlier poems. The selection also contains some new poems as well as two letters between the two friends.

It is a generous selection, but it can never be generous enough. Breytenbach's output is so large and of such a consistently high standard, that only a complete collection of his poetry can satisfy: that will no doubt come some day. Meanwhile, here is Coetzee's choice. He has also included poems from relatively obscure Dutch literary magazines as well.

Breytenbach's poetry is difficult to define; in general "surrealistic," but at the same time grounded in the simple, natural folklore of his people and culture. With irony he hints at traces, but he also quotes from Afrikaans poets, forcing one to look anew at accepted Afrikaans tenets. These effects are lost on the overseas and non-Afrikaans reader, unfortunately, but nevertheless his poetry has an immediate universal appeal when translated by himself, as in Judas Eye. His range is wide, his linguistic reach unlimited.

As selected editions go, one can easily criticize Die hand vol vere. To my mind there could have been more poems from his prison volumes, his so-called Undanced Dance books, and definitely more from Voetskrif. Absent also is the direct accusation leveled at the then prime minister, calling him a butcher, which caused the banning—in South Africa—of the volume in which it appeared in the Netherlands, Skryt. But Breytenbach's full, rich range, is shown here, from the tender love poems to his Vietnamese wife through scathing denunciations of the apartheid government of South Africa. And the lasting impression left, apart from his evident zest in his wizardry with language, is one of life-affirming joy.