Lisa’s Reviews > The Penguin book of modern Australian verse > Status Update

I've been distracted by #ShortStorySeptember, but oh! 'Transfiguration and Death' on page 59 is just heartbreaking: this is the 1st verse:
'Small, birdlike, brisk, industrious and mean,
towards the end she couldn't keep things clean:
thirsty, we couldn't bring ourselves to drink
without first washing glasses, but the sink
itself was covered with a film of grease,
the tea-towels smeary, everything of a piece.'

So relevant to academia right now ; Address to the Pure Scholars, by Evan Jones
Gentlemen scholars in an age of violence,
Clear readers of the insensate and the past,
You are betrayed by your unbalanced calm
To the indifferent voices of destruction:
Scrupulous indeed has been your learning,
Inadequate indeed has been your vision. (p.57)

Scholars can't tell the difference between freedom fighters and terrorists.

RA Simpson is a bit gloomy, but Bruce Dawe's 'Enter without so much as knocking' is wonderful, as his poetry always is.

Two poems by Frances Webb, and I didn't understand either of them, which must be my fault because Wikipedia says he was compared to major European and American poets such as Pasternak, Lowell, Rilke and Eliot. But I liked the three poems by Grace Perry, and three by Bruce Beaver, especially Letters to Live Poets 1. And I really liked Winter Matins by RF Brissenden, 'morning can be the best time of day.'

This week two more by Dorothy Hewitt, two by Vincent Buckley, the beautiful 'Small Elegy for My Father' one by Laurence Collinson and two by J R Rowland, which included my favourite of them all so far 'For a Wedding Anniversary'