Excuse the promotion, but I thought this might be of interest:
Publishers Weekly, 18 March 2002, p93
HEART PRINT
JOHN TRANTER. Salt
(www.saltpublishing.com), $12.95 paper
(104p) ISBN 1-876857-32-3
Tranter may now be Australia's most important poet. Since the late
'60s, Tranter's cosmopolitan, oddball verse, inspired by John Ashbery
and others, has offered a postmodern, hip, slippery challenge to the
better-known rural poetics of Les Murray. During the 1990s, Tranter
emerged as an international figure, first by editing well-received
anthologies, then with the Internet journal Jacket. This volume of
new poems, his 14th Down Under, is now available here via the
Aussie-U.K. venture Salt as his first U.S. release, though a separate
U.S. edition of any of Tranter's books has yet to materialize. Of its
four sections, the second and best, "The Alphabet Murders," makes a
great introduction to his work: its 27 segments (from "After" and
"Before" to "Zero" and "After" again) use their meta-detective tales
as excuses to talk about reading, writing, associative thought and
literary history. Recalling both Ashbery and O'Hara, Tranter promises
to "eat page/ after page of this 'plain speaking"'; imagines a "young
Poet demolished by the smoke/ eating into the paint that held his
face together"; and asks if"you've experienced the feeling of reeling
in/ a tricky fish?" The untitled set of 28 sonnets and delightful
prose poem that conclude the book present light-fingered commentary
on subjects from "Starlight" to absinthe and middle age "I re-live
youth asleep," one affecting line admits, "and leave it behind at
dawn." Readers who skip past the diffuse first two sections to "The
Alphabet Murders" or to the sonnets will see why Tranter has mattered
to Australians for so long. (Apr.)
Forecast: Jacket (www. jacket.zip.com.au) is one of two or three
joumals that have become compulsory for working poets of all stripes;
it, plus Tranter's frequent U.S. readings, have broadened North
Amencan recognition of his work. If this title falls into the right
hands, expect a wamly received and reviewed U.S. selected within a
year or two. (Apr.)
--
Best wishes
Chris
_____________________________________________________
Christopher Hamilton-Emery
Editor
Salt Publishing
PO Box 937, Great Wilbraham
Cambridge PDO, CB1 5JX, UK
tel: +44 (0)1223 880929 (direct and voicemail)
email: [log in to unmask]
web: http://www.saltpublishing.com
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