Of the five themes Steele designates, only one is overtly religious or spiritual, but all of them, for him, are interlaced with a sense of the sacramental. ‘Celebration’ comes from the Latin ‘to frequent’ and ‘to honour’, and Steele’s immersion in the world is a frequenting and honouring of it as a divine gift. But, as he is quick to point out, there is a deep irony there, since the world is always half in darkness: suffering and evil – or theodicy – continues to trouble Christian religion. However, this problem becomes the occasion not for ascetic withdrawal, but for an unconditional engagement with the world. As Steele puts it, in his essay on Dante:

One may, and correctly, identify oneself as ‘called apart’ from certain of society’s structures, and even from certain of the imperatives of our species: but genuine religion always, though sometimes enigmatically, calls one more deeply into life. ‘Anything else’, as Christ said of a connected matter, ‘is of the evil One’.

This helps to account for what might otherwise seem a paradox in the essays: so much secularity on the part of a priest, so much satisfaction and evident joy in the worldly and in the word. As it turns out, it is all part of being called ‘into life’s own dynamics’. If there is a keynote to this collection, it is pleasure. Pleasure and surprise, and sometimes astonishment.

The collection falls into four main types of essays. The first concerns individual poets: Dante, Anthony Hecht, Vincent Buckley, Les Murray, Seamus Heaney, and Peter Porter (twice). These are not opinion pieces but careful readings of poems that establish a finely tuned sense of each poet in a sympathetic and harmonising mode. The essay on Murray, for instance, is the best short essay I have encountered on him. As Steele puts it, with characteristic felicity: ‘Murray’s is a verbal mode in which unseen doors are constantly being opened into surprising rooms.’ All the readings, though, are enlightening – the more so because Steele demonstrates his points with patient regard. But what amazes one, not only in these essays but throughout the book, is the breadth of reference – the depth of learning – brought to bear on the topics. This is especially important in the case of Peter Porter, whose own formidable erudition can seem an impediment at times. Porter himself once remarked that he was his own ideal reader, but I think that gong goes to Steele. I would also point to the essay on the American poet Anthony Hecht; it is not clear to me how prominent he is in Australia, but anyone who reads Steele’s essay on him will want to read a good deal more. These essays in sum – and in each case – are eminently useful. Steele was a legendary professor at Melbourne; one can see why.

The second group of essays is more thematic. ‘Still Moving: Variations on a Theme’ looks at what he calls ‘dramatic suspension’ in poems, again by means of generous readings of individual works – in this case by P.J. Kavanagh, Deborah Randall, and Peter Porter. At times one forgets that there is a connective tissue under the skin of Steele’s allusive and playful prose, but he himself never loses sight of what he is up to. The same holds true in an essay on the figure of birds and beasts in verse, with the exemplars being Norman MacCaig, Richard Wilbur, R.S. Thomas, and Steele himself. It is a delightful piece, underscoring the blessing that creatures represent, despite the violence that haunts nature. ‘Past, Present, Future: Poetry as the Mind in Love’ also sees darkness and light as facets of existence; again, he looks at individual poems, by Gwen Harwood (about the past), W.S. Merwin (the present), and Les Murray (the future). These are not essays in the usual sense of proposition and argumentation, but in the older acceptation of essay as a verb for ‘trying’ or ‘ascertaining’ or ‘weighing’. Steele makes forays out into the field of endeavour and brings back curiosities and valuables to share. It is not so much that we encounter thoughts and ideas as that we encounter a mind that is full of thoughts and ideas – but one that subordinates the cognitive to a broad consciousness and awareness of the world. Steele is more, in Alison Gopnik’s terms, a lantern than a spotlight.

Two other essays take up specifically Christian topics, one on what he calls ‘fugitivity’ (or mutability), which modulates interestingly into notions of negativity and epektasis (a drawing forth of the soul). He does this by way of poems by two non-Christians, Merwin and Ben Belitt, as well as one by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Hopkins, of course, was also a Jesuit poet and is clearly an important figure for Steele. (If I may venture an aside, I would suggest that Steele is the most accomplished poet–priest since Hopkins.) The second essay in this group looks at representations of the four elements – earth, air, fire, water – as emblems of Christ, but this time using four poems of Steele’s own. This might seem a surprising proceeding, but not by the time one comes to it in the book: it is the penultimate essay, and there are five other essays before it in which Steele explicates his own work. This makes up the last general grouping.

Three of the essays by Steele on Steele are about his ekphrastic poems (his poetic representations of pictorial art). Along with John Hollander and Peter Porter, Steele is among the most proficient and prolific poets in this mode, as seen in his two collections, Plenty: Art into Poetry (2003) and The Whispering Gallery: Art into Poetry (2006). Steele is wonderfully adept at entering into the details and the spirit of paintings, and we come away with a sharper understanding of them as a result. Of course these three essays, and the other two about his own work, could strike the reader as alarmingly self-regarding, but Steele manages to pull it off with a certain panache. The secret, I think, is a capacity to summon an emotional and intellectual distance from himself that allows for analysis and illumination. He makes no immodest claims for his work, but neither does he engage in false modesty.  Peter Steele evidently knows well the ways of the wily serpent.

Finally, there is the introductory essay, ‘Stealing Poseidon’s Trident’, which reads like a feuilleton, a saunter along the avenues of poetic writing and thinking. Like a good stroll, one isn’t sure where one is going in this essay, but we end up considering Alfred North Whitehead’s formulation for the three phases of education, ‘romance, precision, and generalisation’. Of the last phase Steele says a taste for generalisation is ‘also a sign of an appetite that is emotional, and ethical, and ontological’. That is a good description of the motivating concerns of these essays, when one factors in precision and romance, too. In that sense, Steele models for us what it is like to be an educated reader: not one who is a humanist per se, but one who is deeply human, who is therefore, in his terms, a religious person as well.

A year or so ago I received a call from the virtuoso poet, translator, and critic Richard Howard in New York. He had been looking for a book on his shelves when one veritably fell into his hands. It was called Expatriates: Reflections on Modern Poetry (1985). He couldn’t recall buying it, but he found it utterly delightful and captivating. He wanted to know if I had ever heard of this Australian, Peter Steele. A copy of Braiding the Voices is already on its way to join the rest of Steele’s books on that shelf.