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Absolutely Revolting

August 1989, no. 113

Welcome to the August 1989 issue of Australian Book Review!

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Alan Wearne reviews The Fitzroy Poems by Π.Ο. and Night flowers by Thalía
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Contents Category: Poetry
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Con the Fruiterer bears the same relation to Australia’s Greek community as the Melbourne Moomba procession does the Eight-Hour Day. Doubtless, there are Hellenic-Australians who relish the performance of whatever WASP funny-man plays him; some Australians are known to approve lovingly of Sir Les Patterson, but at least Barry Humphries always belongs to the nationality he portrays. What really propels Con is that Aussies feel he talks (and therefore thinks and probably acts) funny. It’s all an Edwardian ‘Coon Show’, with Mr Bones and Mr Interlocutor, 1980s style. The kind of society which tolerates this phenomenon with yawn-inspiring regularity (and terms it comedy) might be the subject for any number of sociology essays. Let’s hope that poets never attain the status of Con and his kind, though it’s a fair bet that poets find people far funnier than any comedian.
Book 1 Title: The Fitzroy Poems
Book Author: Π.Ο.
Book 1 Biblio: Collective Effort Press, GPO Box 2430U, Melbourne 3001
Book 1 Author Type: Author
Book 2 Title: Night flowers
Book 2 Author: Thalía
Book 2 Biblio: Collective Effort Press, GPO Box 2430U, Melbourne 3001.
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Con the Fruiterer bears the same relation to Australia’s Greek community as the Melbourne Moomba procession does the Eight-Hour Day. Doubtless, there are Hellenic-Australians who relish the performance of whatever WASP funny-man plays him; some Australians are known to approve lovingly of Sir Les Patterson, but at least Barry Humphries always belongs to the nationality he portrays. What really propels Con is that Aussies feel he talks (and therefore thinks and probably acts) funny. It’s all an Edwardian ‘Coon Show’, with Mr Bones and Mr Interlocutor, 1980s style. The kind of society which tolerates this phenomenon with yawn-inspiring regularity (and terms it comedy) might be the subject for any number of sociology essays. Let’s hope that poets never attain the status of Con and his kind, though it’s a fair bet that poets find people far funnier than any comedian.

Read more: Alan Wearne reviews 'The Fitzroy Poems' by Π.Ο. and 'Night flowers' by Thalía

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Don Anderson reviews Expressway edited by Helen Daniel
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Contents Category: Anthology
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If the proof of the pudding is in the eating, then Helen Daniel came up with a wonderful recipe indeed. Invite thirty-odd prominent Australian fiction writers to respond to Jeffrey Smart’s 1962 oil-on-plywood painting, Cahill Expressway, hung in the National Gallery of Victoria. Some declined, but twenty-nine accepted, and Helen Daniel can take great pride and satisfaction in regarding herself as a ‘privileged host’ indeed. This is truly a magic pudding of a book.
Book 1 Title: Expressway
Book Author: Helen Daniel
Book 1 Biblio: Penguin, $12.99 pb, 294 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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Prelude

From this I shall evolve a man.
This is his essence: the old fantoche

Hanging his shawl upon the wind,
Like something on the stage, puffed out,

His strutting studied through the centuries.
At last, in spite of his manner, his eye

A-cock at the cross-piece on a pole
Supporting heavy cables, slung

Through Oxidia, banal suburb …
Professor Eucalyptus responds to the host.

If the proof of the pudding is in the eating, then Helen Daniel came up with a wonderful recipe indeed. Invite thirty-odd prominent Australian fiction writers to respond to Jeffrey Smart’s 1962 oil-on-plywood painting, Cahill Expressway, hung in the National Gallery of Victoria. Some declined, but twenty-nine accepted, and Helen Daniel can take great pride and satisfaction in regarding herself as a ‘privileged host’ indeed. This is truly a magic pudding of a book.

Read more: Don Anderson reviews 'Expressway' edited by Helen Daniel

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Bev Roberts reviews Falling up into Verse by Edwin Wilson
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Contents Category: Poetry
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The prospect of reviewing a ‘Survival Manual for Live Poets’ was daunting enough, but became positively intimidating when I came across its author’s views on critics. Critics, he says, are like leeches and there’s only one way to deal with leeches: ‘take a small stick and insert it into the ... anus of the leech, pulling the leech back over the stick like a condom, impaling it, inside-out, like a shiskabab, ready to heat’.
Book 1 Title: Falling up into Verse
Book Author: Edwin Wilson
Book 1 Biblio: Woodbine Press, 138 pp, $16.95 pb
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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The prospect of reviewing a ‘Survival Manual for Live Poets’ was daunting enough, but became positively intimidating when I came across its author’s views on critics. Critics, he says, are like leeches and there’s only one way to deal with leeches: ‘take a small stick and insert it into the ... anus of the leech, pulling the leech back over the stick like a condom, impaling it, inside-out, like a shiskabab, ready to heat’.

Ouch. Well, as Edwin Wilson frequently reminds throughout his treatise, one must risk suffering and pain for Art, Truth and Poetry. Besides, he has cunningly slipped into the book a number of challenges to ABR, which should be answered with at least a brief review. So here goes.

Read more: Bev Roberts reviews 'Falling up into Verse' by Edwin Wilson

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Philip Salom reviews The Rearrangement by Alex Skovron
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Contents Category: Poetry
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From the very beginning of The Rearrangement the reader is involved in themes which will play repeatedly through the poems: learning, knowledge and memory, and the way in which these work to satisfy, or frustrate, a metaphysical sense of order, even truth. 
Book 1 Title: The Rearrangement
Book Author: Alex Skovron
Book 1 Biblio: Melbourne University Press, 112 pp, $19.95 hb
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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From the very beginning of The Rearrangement the reader is involved in themes which will play repeatedly through the poems: learning, knowledge and memory, and the way in which these work to satisfy, or frustrate, a metaphysical sense of order, even truth. There is a great fight against forgetfulness:

Trying to recall so much
            and so much more beyond recalling
If you do all this
            and still count yourself a survivor
            and expose your eye to the swivelling
                      moon
            and smile
            and swing your face into the clock be
                      hind you
            always behind you
If you do all this
            you will have conquered the invisible
                      again

            (from the opening poem ‘A Concise History of the Moon’)

Read more: Philip Salom reviews 'The Rearrangement' by Alex Skovron

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Kevin Hart reviews Collected Poems by Charles Buckmaster
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Contents Category: Poetry
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All poets have two chances of being remembered. A few, the strongest of their age, compose a handful of poems that resist time and indifference. Many more never attain anything like poetic strength, yet their works are preserved because they embody a particular style or period. It is still too early to judge where Charles Buckmaster will be placed in the ranks of Australian literature. Already, though, the process of canonisation has started, and at the very least Buckmaster is likely to be read as an exemplary figure of Australian poetry in the 1960s.
Book 1 Title: Collected Poems
Book Author: Charles Buckmaster
Book 1 Biblio: University of Queensland Press, $16.95 pb, 168 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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All poets have two chances of being remembered. A few, the strongest of their age, compose a handful of poems that resist time and indifference. Many more never attain anything like poetic strength, yet their works are preserved because they embody a particular style or period. It is still too early to judge where Charles Buckmaster will be placed in the ranks of Australian literature. Already, though, the process of canonisation has started, and at the very least Buckmaster is likely to be read as an exemplary figure of Australian poetry in the 1960s.

Read more: Kevin Hart reviews 'Collected Poems' by Charles Buckmaster

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