Perhaps trying to escape this atmosphere, Owen’s verse travels physically to Europe, and to Asia; and biologically, into the world of flowers and animals, where she struggles, trying to do too much, as in her semi-concrete ‘Echidna’ poem. It seems to be with relief that she turns to the insect world: alien, foreign, resisting all attempts to insert our sentiment into it, and yet metallic-bright and alive. Bees, especially, seem to bring out the emotion that is so cherished and hidden away, everywhere else. Though, sadly, this collection does not include the perfectly evocative ‘Honey’, it does have, near its end, ‘The Bees’, in which the idea and the fact of this historical, mathematical, social insect allow Owen to do everything she wishes, resolutely and resonantly:

I remember a swarm of bees spiralling once 
by a leafy canal in France, 
meditating, seeking something. 
On the cool stone edge, I was dangling my legs, 
watching the bees 
and the homely little boats queued back from the lock. 
Happy cargoed in sad, 
as I didn’t then guess.

All the elements of the book – the sad dads at the swimming lesson, helplessly gazing at the nubile instructor; the girls rowing, emblems of happiness; Spinoza grinding his glasses; a vague, clouded reach for the stars and for abstract truth – are here resolved.

This collection, perhaps because it ‘introduces’ Owen to English readers, leaves aside the chronology of the poems’ publication; and wisely so. However, and it is more important than it might seem, the cover is truly awful, possibly the worst I have ever seen on a book of poetry. Perhaps we in Australia have been spoiled by Puncher & Wattmann, but this book is like a museum piece from the dawn of desktop publishing. The title, in a pencil-thin greenish sans serif, sinks into a background of bluey wash fading upwards into white, with a kind of crepuscular ray that shades from aquamarine to pink and has the publisher’s logo banner slapped across it! On the rear of the book the blurb type is blue on blue, fuchsia on white, and white on blue. There is a fuzzy photo of the author that cuts off the top of her head for no apparent reason, and the whole effect is highly bilious. No one who wasn’t quite fixed on discovering Jan Owen would ever pick this book up to browse it. It is one thing for the poetry to require that you accommodate yourself to it, since that is a worthwhile exercise. But for the physical object to repel the reader is altogether too rigorous. If you come across it, be brave, or cover it in brown paper when you get home, and all will be well.