Lea’s strength as a storyteller is evident mote than in his previous books, and there are several. He follows a fine Australian tradition in the wake of C.J. Dennis. but by being who he is himself and not by emulation. I think of characters such as Ginger Mick, a bloke that works in a pickle factory, Rose and Doreen. Barry Dickins writes in a similar vernacular. Lea does it better. The verse is baroque and richly embellished. The poems wear astrakhan and beaver fur coats, silk scarves and top hats. The book reads as the poet speaks, in pubs, pool rooms, poetry readings, dinner parties and the race-track. Sometimes his juxtaposition of imagery, wit and ideas, is what I would imagine to be the contents of a gypsy caravan -somewhat haphazard but, a cornucopia of phenomena, dream and magic! There is a kind of regality, a nobility about the work that’s hard to fathom, but it’s there alright and I’m reminded of the gallant pugilist, the Marquis of Queensberry, Byron and other characters of the past, but the writing is very much in the present and depicts the current state of Australiana, with little restraint. The poet is not the seer, sage, or glib philosopher. Neither does he veer off into metaphysical conundrums. Like a barefoot thief in the night he’ll steal your dreams, before the crafty stars suck them all away. Sometimes he tries too hard, ‘fabulous crescendos of indescribable resonances / reverberating to the single pulse of an awesome orgasm.’ This doesn’t do anything for me. If it’s indescribable, why write it? Where he has an eye for detail he succeeds. Some metaphors end most unexpectedly, ‘a butterfly that lights upon a flowerlas dedicated as murder.’ This change in key seduces and shocks us into the awareness of the poet’s experience of real life. As he says, ‘metaphors are beggars in golden coats/ coaxing us.’

There are stories about an idiot in ear muffs murdering the lawn, ‘while the sun is as bright as a fresh cadaver’, or a trip to Drouin races with Tulips and Les the butcher and Ambulance Bob wearing top hat and jeans, and Slipper McDonald, and some adults ‘bob a jig, land the jockeys silks / whap gently at their skin, land the horses bob their heads / like drakes in heat. All in all it was a day of fifteen bright balloons.’

In Young and Jacksons it’s not Chloe who is the tenth muse as is suggested on the back cover of the book - Shelton and the Snowdrop Kid soon get thrown out of that pub ‘hit the toe and catch a bus.’ No, the muse is a Grande Dame in that bus, maybe 80 or 85, ‘as languid as a wreath of snow looking superb in her peach melba hat / land the poet proceeded to let her know just how wonderful she looked, lapislazuli eyes, deep as the sky / lips as lewd as the sea land the map of her face could only be explored by / a searcher for dreams, land she was ever so Sweet, / with just a hint of a smile,’ and the idiot bus driver in the midst of the delightful reveries, says to the poet ‘you can’t talk to an old lady like that and her violet eyes shrank like anemones taken from rocks in the sea.’ And isn’t this so symbolic of what is so often misunderstood and rubbished in poets, dreamers, and those who dare to be different, who think or act outside the establishment without harm or malice implied? But is the poet put down? No! - he and the Snowdrop Kid, now off the bus, ‘doff their imaginary caps / to the fast disappearing peach melba hat!’

In a serious and moving Poem ‘for joel’ – ‘i begin, to feel what it is to be old / it’ s not the aches and agues that plague you / rather it’s the death of friends / ... and yet you can see the superb’ tracery / around a pigeon’ s eyes land the iris, so pink land being blinked with such rapidity / that you can barely catch it passing.’ Then ‘back to the gypsy in ‘the dip’s dilemma’ ‘So what pretty person’s pocket shall i pick today?’ And the charm again in another poem, ‘the mist lifted like a doffed hat.’ In Sheltonia we find Shelley, Byron, Rimbaud, Fred Nerk ‘of the luminous sock / and brilliantined eye. / Eric Beach of the sly line, / Joel of the Sculpt, / Jonny the Thump,’ all in the same poem, and like Caligula, all born in the year dot, and all coming up heroes.

In a book containing 86 pages and most of them packed full, it is not surprising that there is some cliché ‘landscape of my brain and scattering like leaves before an autumn wind.’ And I don ‘t appreciate ‘i want to write gorgeous poems. / i want to stay alive. / is that too much to ask?’ But I can get enthused by most of it, such striking lines as – ‘the hard perfume of a man, / in the wilderness of an afterwork afternoon, and a memorable epigram like a fully rigged schooner / you came up from sleep / the Sir Francis Drake of the dream.’

Unlike we’ re all bastards in the final analysis which are · lines by another poet, to Lea I think, in the end it’s all a bit of an extravagant benedic­tion, and holy in its irreverence to the pseudo-religious, pseudo-judicial standards and values of society.

Finally we come to ‘doing times’, a recent and long 5 part prison poem. We find an introspective narrative with raw and stark realizations and advice to young players ‘ i have changed lover the years’ i have challenged, / yet still i can feel the illegal beat of my heart. / my collective(which is. the blood in my - bones)stays to the ‘stay free without cowardice / or· its attendants, / breathe blossoms ... if you’re going to do crime. / be prepared to do time.’

It is this and other mature poems that really get to me. If it is the calibre of Lea’s further writing I can only echo John Reed’s elegant farewell to the poet, ‘keep writing poems Shelley my boy, / stay alive and I bid you a fond farewell.’