If the contemporary French philosopher Quentin Meillassoux’s recent book on Mallarmé and its startling thesis are things to go by, meter should not have been so easily dispensed with in the pursuit of an ever freer free verse by modernists, postmodernists and their acolytes. According to Meillassoux, the arch-moderniser’s emblematic Un Coup de Dés, the defining text of poetic iconoclasm, was in fact a cryptic defence of verse proper, an argument in favour of meter and measurement. One may read Andrews’ poems as belonging to a somewhat similar trajectory. His ironic voice, quotidian themes and psychological concerns are very much modern and contemporary, but it is his indomitable ability to count (syllables and lines) which defines his aesthetics.

But does Andrews’ approach – which I would define as measured witticism – run the risk of turning into an application of what Meillassoux’s teacher Alain Badiou has termed a ‘classical aesthetics’? That is to say, does the poet’s adherence to a refined and crafted poetic result in poems that offer a good dose of technical dexterity, reading pleasure and so on, but few new ideas? I must admit, as much as I admire Andrews’ skills in fusing truly modern, at times surrealistic and absurdist concepts with a disciplined style of versification, I did not always find the sort of intellectual or dialectical operation which I feel a writer of his obvious complexity is capable of performing.

The poem ‘Mottoes’, for example, includes a number of truly funny and cleverly sarcastic lines – ‘academic keep inventing / ways to feel good about watching bad TV’ or ‘the ugly […] watch / time wreaking their revenge on the beautiful’ – but I’m not sure if it has something new to say about watching TV, ageing or jealousy. I am fully aware that in our age of postmodern aestheticism, it is uncouth to expect a poem to propose and affirm a new idea or an argument instead of simply doing interesting things with words. Nevertheless, I found the neither-this-nor-that rhetorical strategy of ‘Mottoes’ – ‘Neither rehearsing a charmingly modest /Golden Logie speech nor getting nostalgic / […] / Neither doormat nor systemic cactus’ – which advices the reader to dismiss both sides of an argument, rather disengaged and disengaging.

My inability to connect with the above poem perhaps says more about me – and my problematically detached state of mind – than it does about Andrews’ poem. Furthermore, I did feel very much engrossed by quite a number of other poems in Lime Green Chair, such as ‘My Life Without You’ in which the speaker makes a new discovery apropos of the essential contingency of the beloved as the Real of the speaker’s memories:

Next year it will be twenty years already.
You’ve probably forgotten most of the times
you made all the difference (if you ever knew)
by not being otherwise than as you are:
a perfect stranger to dinginess. You were
the barefoot breeze all along the branching path,
the breathable light and the ocean-washed air.
It was you. I knew it. I had no idea.

This collection is, without a doubt, one of the most singular and intriguing poetry publications produced by an Australian poet, and deserves to be acknowledged and rewarded accordingly. And that its author is an internationally recognised man of letters should be – far from an excuse for expressing envy in the name of opposing the cultural cringe – a genuine cause for our gratitude and for celebration.