Yeah, that's a lovely poem, Alison. I would probably go more often to
Webb, though, truly a fascinating poet, & certainly well known to a lot
of poets there; Robert Adamson has some good comments & certainly some
fine poems dedicated to him.
Doug
On 17-Dec-05, at 6:04 PM, Alison Croggon wrote:
> I woke up this morning thinking of this poem, it must have been in my
> dreams
> somehow, and couldn't rest until I had tracked it down in what is at
> present
> a most chaotic library - my poetry books are scattered over the house.
> But I
> finally found it. It is one of my favourite of all Australian poems,
> just so
> sheerly and strangely beautiful. Stow (b 1935) is better known for his
> novels, which are also wonderful, but he seems to have been largely
> forgotten in the larger narrative myth of OzPo.
>
> Stow's is a kind of voice which strikes me as inimitably Australian,
> although it doesn't "fit" the nationalist narrative that usually goes
> with
> that - in a way I kind of bracket him with Patrick White. I love the
> precarious but never faltering balance here between the actual and epic
> lament. (Btw, all the plants he mentions, aside from hay, are feral
> weeds.)
>
> Btw, Roger, do you know the poetry of Francis Webb? Another amazing
> poet
> from mid-century who is less well known than he ought to be.
>
> All the best
>
> A
>
>
> Ruins of the City of Hay
Douglas Barbour
11655 - 72 Avenue NW
Edmonton Ab T6G 0B9
(780) 436 3320
the precision of openness
is not a vagueness
it is an accumulation
cumulous
bpNichol
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