This Berryman's a moralistic thing:
its jacket has been lit, man rolled back to ma
and shot with liverspots like extra moons
or doctored film of UFOs –
blinked, I think, by a student in the bath
who, before Returns, checked the title page with '??°a marche?
Oui' (knowing a book so used would not reply);
and who, for all his troubles, failed
to notice a label still stuck fast across the blurb
and faded to its price code, W. O. E.
Every landscape painting is a left eye's worth
of a stereoscopic image. There's no comparison.
Sight has its own methodology. Hearing too.
If a picture could talk we could not understand it.
This, though black & white TV returned me better
than colour to where 'a hand can approximate
any shape'. Where the blessed say 'Oh yes'
about their pain. Let's have every image in sharp
focus evenly across the canvas 'just for now'.
Stanley Spenser, an old favourite. An old fart.
'Art' is what remains after a trip to Raspberry
Creek. It can be 'bolted to the asphalt' &
deserted by a whole team of people with tools
who walk away, leaving an eerie absence.
Recursive absence too. As in ekphrasis. Or a
'poem' upon a book of poetry. It can be a sign
saying: Go this way. As in a weathercock.
Or clock stopped 20:07. 'I step to the cliff edge-'
Or it can be something else entirely.
someone's shout become
an accent on elocution lip-reading
at the bar – 'is repetition still itself?'
gazing at the décor a glass too tall
for its short straw if faces trickle in
a peck on the cheek in duplicate
and all slide and the anodized
salvers shine like some pleasant hangover
from last century – way an ultra-violet
lit songlist catalogues nostalgia as a genre
self-portrait in the third person – smile
while the sunken lounge swallows me
then up and go with the flow gyrating down
light to guide us down our only sprung dance-floor
you left i was lost guitar in his minefield
of effect pedals this way to
those rare tickets illicit lure of the cubicle
unspoken like here they know your order: two news
a regular fantasy inched closer to a view to
fissure in a cymbal rim or tympanum the law
packed lips of gum their feel it a figure of speech
and a fait accompli historically the encore
applaud a first shadow each to follow
late and later forgot time and danced on
into the death throes of a last, a final heroic outro.
what wakes me some outside
blast of glass waste banking up
like a valle d'aosta autostrada
in deepest nebbia. terminal shift
audio setting unavailable for
comment, the year turns a page –
cities edged maple lemon nearly
all green thought flattery by this
the fade of the swimsuit season, a
bridge where a subject seated
might fork out (through the nose?)
for his own caricature
here on the water successive
symmetries reliant on reflection
as if ideas settle to focus slow within
shade a certain shade of blue
below us a deckchair, constellation
of tin cans aglow in the shallow
we arrived your 'forests'
of statuary dogs and lions ghosts
where fire relocates the royals
and some time later metro it back
to the hotel-of-the-same-name
hundred channels none that matters
sort re-shuffle the postcards
voice like a field of unreturned
calls to remind me if when? this all
falls together we'll be (seriously) overdue.
after Stephen Haley's Forest (2008)
In a forest of blue trees it's easy to feel lost.
Yet calling which way now Hansel
would be purely rhetorical; if a path leads
out of these trees it begins & ends with ourselves.
Ask instead-in this age of reality–
why shouldn't office chairs adorn a forest floor?
Confused now with appearances
fall back on familiars:
trees shaped like trees, the idea of water
spilling over glistening stones,
stars suspended beneath the ceiling
by nothing more than our faith in art.
Here, to seek concrete answers
is to target a singular truth in the arc of night.
Beyond the forest's glass cage a computer
hums its music of making & the god
of images-who never wholly sleeps-projects
anew the waiting world: a forest is beautiful,
the blue light announces, a forest
could be this, or this, or this.
When he reads me, I'm reading him,
each line along his brow,
the spaces between breaths.
He's a mystery.
Those eyes that shift from left to right
hide as much as they reveal.
Someone imagined him,
gave him grammar of demeanour,
used his pale skin as metaphor.
His form I'd say, is more or less
traditional, though marred by adjectival
spots he won't get rid of.
I give him marks at least
for genuine attention.
Low-shelved,
I wish I'd written him.
We write beneath the noise of men
in our choice of cell.
Wrath and keyboards
perpetuity
and fashions of cruelty.
Lies are by nature brittle
(I hope this thing)
written on your lips.
white paint is medicine.
Welfare on wheels
huskies turn on the air-conditioning.
Team Sky is winning 3-0.
Chasms of pepper
every vehicle is a princess.
I hear the nurses calling
this new aristocrat
in his cotton rags stuck
in the roaring library of fire.
Could anyone be bothered pressing these
in clay? Or scratching them in polished stone?
Words once were more than writing, were their own
accomplishment – you didn't read at ease,
you read at work, you dragged them from a field.
Then words were stooked, hand-tied, and lined in rows.
You harvested whatever you could carry.
But now, each day's another dictionary,
a library of untranslated prose.
We weigh the chaff and think we're talking yield.
I don't believe there's anything to say
that someone reading this in 3010
might think was truly worth the waste of clay
except, “I was alive like you. Back then.”
I didn't mean to be an artwork,
going about my business on the platz.
Coffee slurped smoke in-out
shirt tail wedged down one last time.
Okay, okay, white shirt into back trousers,
But he could've chosen one of the other drones.
Who knows what stirs behind the small splinters
and wood grain? It's just easier to thank yourselves,
that you didn't end up like me. All your fears
in one tidy package vanquished with a smirk
and sideways step to the next exhibit.
And I'm easy to store.
If I dropped on your foot,
you'd know. If I fell, I'd crack. Like
to see a picture do that. Maybe
the critics would mourn. But what I really
want is for someone to touch the indurate bulge
that is my hair and pretend to put it in place.
Sometimes, not enough,
I'd really look at you
and say: Let me clean your glasses.
You'd take them off.
Blink. Hand them over.
Pull out a folded handkerchief
from your trouser pocket
and give that up, too.
It's always the edges that get blurry.
I'd work on those the longest, teasing out
flecks of leaf and breakfast smudges and wattle pollen
until the glass was clear. Like making them new
again. You'd put them on – just as slowly
as you took them off – look around
at your familiar world and say:
There's no doubt about you.
i thought
you could
tell me
the colour of god's hair or something
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successful poetry
began
with the Star of David
his caricature stood
in the middle
of a fountainhead,
darting
between shadows
and flickers of saints,
stitching sinners
into dishonest possessions
Patches of light would
perambulate the fringes
of stealth and supposition
No one knows quite how many
bare-chested men
have been dismissed
in lieu
of pragmatic identification
They are there somewhere,
dancing among
short-term bravery,
casting
glances at sideways origin
mama wiped a clean gash
The faces
of her ghost-pale sons
idling between
bundles of frightened daughters
[snickering bookstore]
He slipped through the curtains
on a Friday night, and pulled them tight
behind him. Immediately familiar,
he peeled back the sheet and slid his hands
into her prickly armpits, rested his head on her back,
pressed her belly, tucked a stethoscope
under the cotton smock, lifted her bra
to get close to her heart.
You don't have any rebound tenderness,
he said, and you're not guarding,
but you've had nothing to eat,
you must be so hungry. And as his warm hands
went here and there, he told her of eating rock oysters
alone at a Sydney restaurant, a whole plate
all to himself.
Fire Season: New Poems by Kate Middleton
Giramondo Publishing, 2009
Fire Season is Kate Middleton's first book of poetry, after numerous publications in journals and newspapers in Australia, England and the US. Middleton has trained as a librettist, and we see a classical influence permeating this book, with narrative voices discovered for literary figures from Penelope, to Leda, Desdemona, and even the Minotaur's previously undiscovered, equally bullish, sister. Middleton's technique of inhabiting specifically located moments of time and place extends from classical to popular culture, including poems written 'with' Lauren Bacall, Lana Turner, and Judy Garland.
I Con: New and Selected Poems by Tim Thorne
Salt Publishing, 2008
History is a con. Every second year undergrad haunting a uni bar knows that. Understanding history is not who did what to whom when, it is how the narrative reflects on the teller and the audience. I Con: New and Selected Poems, the justly deserved retrospective of Tasmania poet Tim Thorne published in a beautiful hard cover edition by Salt, works its playful magic in the fluid space between fact and myth.
The Other Way Out by Bronwyn Lea
Giramondo Publishing, 2008
Young Rain by Kevin Hart
Giramondo Publishing, 2008
One of the most prominent features of these two recent titles – by two of Australia's most successful poets, published by one of the country's most exciting literary publishers – is their emphasis on the erotic. By engaging with unambiguously sexual themes and imagery, Bronwyn Lea and Kevin Hart have produced texts that beguile and entertain their reader through the evocation of, or a yearning for, romance and sensuality, whilst also running the risk of reducing allusion and openness in meaning by describing a definite, rather familiar, concept.
flub-a-dub in the purple west helicopter(David G. Lanoue)a bald eagle atop the sharp left turn sign(Naia)a woman knits flowers on a soldier's grave(Lawrence)her second husband wears red-framed glasses(SAT??Æ Ayaka)apple sack and a library book about gravity(Deborah P Kolodji)eternal doldrums on the Sea of Tranquility(josh wikoff)in no time a lonely cricket calls the tune(Vasile Moldovan)Don Marquis' archy cocks a snook at humans(Kathy Earsman)small business the pub owner strokes a huge belly(Origa)her best rose-covered cup dulled by dust(Sandra Simpson)all night the humpbacks speak of love(josh wikoff)a water lily opens in Kakadu(Anne Elvey)my hand on the rock no space for a shadow(Sandra Simpson)da Vinci knows of these things light shade and objects(Rhonda Poholke)by the window who sits stitching pearls onto silk?(Genevieve Osborne)in poverty's grip identity folds(Michael Roper)cherry blossom drift- here comes the poet with his hippopotamus(Lorin Ford)listening to Pink Floyd still on the hit list(Barbara A Taylor)children laugh unafraid of the past in the summer grass(Keiji Minato)a ladybug of leisure wanders upside-down(Fleur)on a city tram opening to Han Shan's distances(Lorin Ford)cold mountain range plays hidden music(Joseph Mueller)hunting truffles the sow cannot help herself(Ashley Capes)the streets are empty now rumble of a tank(Greg Rochlin)after the lightning strike a ti-tree blooms in halves(Rhonda Poholke)a divorced mother bungee jumps(Aldia)tattooed on the back of her neck a howling Jesus(David G. Lanoue)a cardboard alphabet tacked to backyard trees(Joseph Mueller)our renga booklet- the wind turns leaf after leaf and the moon reads it(Vasile Moldovan)the players rehearse on Prospero's isle(Lorin Ford)after midnight it all goes topsy-turvy(Genevieve Osborne)youtube koalas munch on pixel gum leaves(David Prater)cross-species kindness - a fireman offers his water bottle(Anne Elvey)morning meditation a crow disrupts my shadow(Graham Nunn)garden lilac unfurling at the tempo of its fragrance(Origa)our postman arrives - pitter-patter tin drum(Michael Roper)
This is the final result of Cordite's experiment in interactive renga, with Keiji Minato acting as renga master. To see how this renga came into being, check out the 1024 comments on Haikunaut Island Renga 1 and Haikunaut Island Renga 2. Haikunauts are go!
Magisterium by Joel Deane
Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2008
Magisterium is the second collection by Joel Deane, following on from his debut collection Subterranean Radio Songs and his debut novel Another. In an interview with Paul Mitchell published in Cordite in 2006, when asked about the interplay between his work as speechwriter for the Premier of Victoria and his other life as a poet, Deane cited American poet Eleanor Wilner, who said of poets that, 'We need to take back the rhetorical high ground from the politicians who degrade it'. Deane went on express the hope that the poems contained in his next book might approach 'the kind of apocalyptic public language' hinted at by Wilner. Such ambitions can sound a little lofty, but Magisterium would seem to be a successful achievement of that goal.
Ten Years of Things That Didn't Kill Us edited by Daniel Watson et al
Paroxysm Press, 2008
When Paroxysm Press sent out their call for submissions in March last year for an anthology titled Ten Years of Things That Didn't Kill Us, they had just one piece of advice for writers: 'we want it to be as Paroxysm as hell'. The result – a collection of poetry and prose from writers well-known to Paroxysm followers along with a number of new contributors – isn't intended to please everyone. This is a challenging collection of stinging truths and shocking moments, along with occasional touches of beauty.
Poetry Without Borders edited by Michelle Cahill
Picaro Press, 2008
There is a deep sigh of relief when we come across Poetry Without Borders, an anthology willing to cross unknown terrain to bring us the voices of poets rarely heard. Whether it's due to language, cultural, economic or psychological factors, those poets who have migrated or are considered to be 'new arrivals' are hardly published. Though quite a few of these poets are established and held in high esteem in their countries of origin, they are considered to be voices of the periphery in Australia or, at best, 'emerging' voices.
Novaless I-XXVI by Nicholas Manning
Achiote Press, 2007
These words came to mind when I tried to list the main concerns of this twenty-six poem sequence: light, love, perception and apperception, rapture, thought, things, stars, source, memory. The poems in Novaless I-XXVI are highly sensual, their strange disjunctive images always in the process of forming or resolving in the mind. The sequence as a whole seems to be concerned as much with the operations of thinking and sensing as with any outside objects of reference. Nicholas Manning's poetics works against the divide between exterior and interior. His siding with complexity, in these and other ways, is suggested in the first lines of the book: 'to speak / of * the forgotten / is easy lyricism…'
children laugh unafraid of the past in the summer grass(Keiji Minato)a ladybug of leisure wanders upside-down(Fleur)on a city tram opening to Han Shan's distances(Lorin Ford)cold mountain range plays hidden music(Joseph Mueller)hunting truffles the sow cannot help herself(Ashley Capes)the streets are empty now rumble of a tank(Greg Rochlin)after the lightning strike a ti-tree blooms in halves(Rhonda Poholke)a divorced mother bungee jumps(Aldia)tattooed on the back of her neck a howling Jesus(David G. Lanoue)a cardboard alphabet tacked to backyard trees(Joseph Mueller)our renga booklet- the wind turns leaf after leaf and the moon reads it(Vasile Moldovan)the players rehearse on Prospero's isle(Lorin Ford)after midnight it all goes topsy-turvy(Genevieve Osborne)youtube koalas munch on pixel gum leaves(David Prater)cross-species kindness - a fireman offers his water bottle(Anne Elvey)morning meditation a crow disrupts my shadow(Graham Nunn)garden lilac unfurling at the tempo of its fragrance(Origa)our postman arrives - pitter-patter tin drum(Michael Roper)
This is Part 2 of Free Haikunaut Renga. Comments for this post have now been closed.
For a summary of Cordite's haikunaut renga project, please read this post. Haikunauts are go!
Growing Up with Mr Menzies by John Jenkins
John Leonard Press, 2008
John Jenkins' narrative verse, Growing Up with Mr Menzies, begins with an imagined visit by the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Menzies, to the Elwood home of the infant Felix Hayes. Like a Wise Man at a nativity, Menzies bears a gift, a 'considerably handsome' pocket watch, which he dangles over Felix's cot. The baby responds firstly with smiles and dribbles, but then shows interest in the new object. This interest is deserved, as the watch symbolises the events and ideas which will inform and haunt Felix's later life.
