John Tranter site - Notes to Poems: Urban Myths: 210 Poems: New and Selected (UQP)

Urban Myths: 210 Poems: New and Selected
University of Queensland Press, 2006. 322 pages.
ISBN-0-7022-3557-1, paperback.

While you’re here, please take the time to explore the rest of this 500-page site:
see the links on the homepage.

Author’s Note on the Notes below: all the poems in the book Urban Myths are listed here. Some poems have notes, some do not. The notes are published only here on the Internet, and not in the book. They are provided for whatever interest they may have, and are not meant to be necessary for an appreciation of the poems. Poems are sorted here according to the page order in the UQP edition.
In September 2006 Salt Publishing (Cambridge, UK) published a UK/US edition of the book, with different page numbers. (Cover image below; visit the Salt internet pages here.)
For each poem, the page number in the UQP edition and poem title are followed by the first line of the poem in italics, then by the note (if there is one) tagged with the poem’s line number which the note refers to, then by the publication history of the poem. Where two or more poems appear on one page, each poem title is preceded by the page number followed by a, b or c depending on the position of that poem on the page.

    I should like to acknowledge the valuable contribution of bibliographic reference material provided as a subscription service by Austlit Gateway at http://www.austlit.edu.au/.
    Some of the poems in this book use a device I have called ‘terminals’ — taking a poem by another writer, copying the words that end each line, discarding the original poem and its concerns, and inventing a new and different poem using the borrowed end-words.
    Urban Myths: 210 Poems: New and Selected was launched by Pam Brown at Gleebooks, 49 Glebe Point Road, Glebe NSW 2037, on Friday 19 May 2006. Visit Gleebooks and buy the book on-line! International orders a speciality! See Trish Davies’ life-affirming photos of the event on her web log. Click on any of these photos to see a high-resolution version of the same photo.
    Here’s the University of Queensland Press on the Internet. The book has been awarded: the 2006 Victorian state award for poetry, the 2007 New South Wales state award for poetry, the 2008 South Australian state award for poetry, and the 2008 South Australian Premier’s Prize for the best book overall (which includes fiction, non-fiction, poetry and others for the years 2006 and 2007).
    This file is about 85 printed pages long, and the linked files about 50 pages more. Please note that these notes are necessarily incomplete. Please notify me of any errors or typos, or any additions you would like to see: «My Email Address» ...thanks. — J.T.

Title] A version of Hölderlin’s ‘When I Was a Boy’ (Da ich ein Knabe war… ). Here’s the German original, with a plain English translation:

Friedrich Hölderlin

Da ich ein Knabe war...

‘When I was a boy’

Da ich ein Knabe war, Rettet’ ein Gott mich oft Vom Geschrei und der Ruthe der Menschen, Da spielt’ ich sicher und gut Mit den Blumen des Hains, Und die Lüftchen des Himmels Spielten mit mir.	When I was a boy, one of the gods would often rescue me from the shouts and from the rods of men, and, safe in their kindness, I played among trees and flowers, and the breezes of heaven played with me.
Und wie du das Herz Der Pflanzen erfreust, Wenn sie entgegen dir Die zarten Arme streken,	And as you make glad the hearts of plants when they stretch out to you with their delicate arms,
So hast du mein Herz erfreut Vater Helios! und, wie Endymion, War ich dein Liebling, Heilige Luna!	So you made my heart glad, Father Helios, and like Endymion I was your favourite, Holy Moon.
Oh all ihr treuen Freundlichen Götter! Daß ihr wüßtet, Wie euch meine Seele geliebt!	O all you kind and loyal gods! I wish you could know how my soul loved you then.
Zwar damals rieff ich noch nicht Euch mit Nahmen, auch ihr Nanntet mich nie, wie die Menschen sich nennen Als kennten sie sich.	Even though when I evoked you then it was not yet with your names, and you never named me, as men use names as though they knew one another.
Doch kannt’ ich euch besser, Als ich je die Menschen gekannt, Ich verstand die Stille des Aethers Der Menschen Worte verstand ich nie.	I knew you better than I have ever known men. I understood the silence of high heaven, but never the words of men.
Mich erzog der Wohllaut Des säuselnden Hains Und lieben lernt’ ich Unter den Blumen.	The breezes singing in the trees were my teachers, and I learned to love among the flowers.
Im Arme der Götter wuchs ich groß.	I grew up in the arms of the gods.

12: a little moon followed the usherette] The circle of light formed by the usherette’s flashlight pointed down to the floor.

Appears–in: Southerly vol.63 no.1, 2003, p.39. Collected in Tranter, John. Borrowed Voices. Nottingham: Shoestring Press, 2002. ISBN-1-899549-74-9.

Appears–in: The Penguin Book of Australian Verse, Editor: Harry Heseltine, Ringwood, Victoria and Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England : Penguin, 1972, p.455; The New Australian Poetry, Editor: John Tranter, St Lucia, Queensland : Makar Press, 1979, p.145, The Penguin Book of Modern Australian Poetry, Editors: John Tranter, and Philip Mead, Penguin Australia, 1991, p.275; Landbridge : contemporary Australian poetry, Editor: John Kinsella, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1999, p.295. Collected in Parallax and other poems, John Tranter, Poetry Australia no.34 June 1970 (a misprint on the half-title page wrongly dates the magazine as ‘June 1968’) p.25.

Appears–in: Collected in Parallax and other poems, John Tranter, Poetry Australia no.34 June 1970 (a misprint on the half-title page wrongly dates the magazine as ‘June 1968’) p.13.

Appears–in: Collected in Parallax and other poems, John Tranter, Poetry Australia no.34 June 1970 (a misprint on the half-title page wrongly dates the magazine as ‘June 1968’) p.16.

Title: Kabul] Written after a visit to Kabul, Afghanistan, in the autumn of 1967.

3: chorus of camels] The top photo shows Lyn Grady (later Lyn Tranter) in front of a herd of wild camels that appeared one morning in the north-west Afghan desert near Herat, 1967. Below, the main street of Herat.

9: four thousand British corpses in the pass] An understatement. In January 1842 the British garrison in Kabul began a desperate retreat in the face of widespread Afghan hostility. As they struggled through the snowbound Khyber pass, the British were attacked by Ghilzai warriors. The British column of more than 16,000-strong (consisting of about 4,500 military personnel, both British and Indian, along with as many as 12,000 camp followers) was massacred in the thirty miles of treacherous gorges and passes lying between Kabul and Gandomak. Only one man survived: Dr William Brydon. (Wikipedia) Bottom photo: the Khyber pass, September 1967.

Appears–in: Southerly vol.28 no.4 1968, p.244. Collected in Parallax and other poems, John Tranter, Poetry Australia no.34 June 1970 (a misprint on the half-title page wrongly dates the magazine as ‘June 1968’) p.18.

Appears–in: collected in Parallax and other poems, John Tranter, Poetry Australia no.34 June 1970 (a misprint on the half-title page wrongly dates the magazine as ‘June 1968’) p.30.

Appears–in: collected in Parallax and other poems, John Tranter, Poetry Australia no.34 June 1970 (a misprint on the half-title page wrongly dates the magazine as ‘June 1968’) p.40.

Appears–in: The New Australian Poetry, Editor: John Tranter, St Lucia, Queensland : Makar Press, 1979, p.146; collected in Parallax and other poems, John Tranter, Poetry Australia no.34 June 1970 (a misprint on the half-title page wrongly dates the magazine as ‘June 1968’) p.39.

I had not read any other work with this title when I wrote this poem, though other works with this title exist.

Appears–in: Australian Poetry Now, Editor: Thomas Shapcott, South Melbourne, Victoria : Sun Books, ca.1970, pp.128–129; collected in Parallax and other poems, John Tranter, Poetry Australia no.34 June 1970 (a misprint on the half-title page wrongly dates the magazine as ‘June 1968’) p.41.

Title: Mary Jane] Sometimes believed (mistakenly) to be a translation of ‘marijuana’.

Appears–in: Australian Poetry Now, Editor: Thomas Shapcott, South Melbourne, Victoria : Sun Books, ca.1970, p.129; collected in Parallax and other poems, John Tranter, Poetry Australia no.34 June 1970 (a misprint on the half-title page wrongly dates the magazine as ‘June 1968’) p.51.

Appears–in: collected in Parallax and other poems, John Tranter, Poetry Australia no.34 June 1970 (a misprint on the half-title page wrongly dates the magazine as ‘June 1968’) p.54.

Appears–in: collected in Parallax and other poems, John Tranter, Poetry Australia no.34 June 1970 (a misprint on the half-title page wrongly dates the magazine as ‘June 1968’) p.56.

Appears–in: collected in Red Movie and Other Poems, John Tranter, Cremorne, New South Wales : Angus and Robertson, 1972, p.5.

Appears–in: collected in Red Movie and Other Poems, John Tranter, Cremorne, New South Wales : Angus and Robertson, 1972, p.6.

15: ‘princely nature of our elder brother’] From Arthur Rimbaud, ‘Âge d’or’, 1872.

17: ‘… may you not be long on the way!’] From John Ashbery, ‘Thoughts of a Young Girl’, collected in Contemporary American Poetry, Ed. Donald Hall, Penguin, Harmondsworth, Middlessex UK, 1962, page 148: Oh my daughter, / My sweetheart, daughter of my late employer, princess, / May you not be long on the way!’

Appears–in: collected in Red Movie and Other Poems, John Tranter, Cremorne, New South Wales : Angus and Robertson, 1972, p.7.

Appears–in: collected in Red Movie and Other Poems, John Tranter, Cremorne, New South Wales : Angus and Robertson, 1972, p.9.

Title: Red Movie] I had meant to call this poem (and my second book) ‘Blue Movie’. When I titled my first book Parallax I assumed that the title was original. Not so, said David Malouf upon seeing the book, and cited Nancy Cunard’s third collection of poems (Hogarth Press, 1925) with the same title. This time I went to the University of Sydney Library and trawled through their listing. Sure enough, Terry Southern had beaten me to title ‘Blue Movie’ with a book of rude vigour and bracing vulgarity. ‘Red’ hadn’t been taken, so Red Movie it was.

Appears–in: collected in Red Movie and Other Poems, John Tranter, Cremorne, New South Wales : Angus and Robertson, 1972, p.35.

3: ‘sister to breath’] From Arthur Rimbaud, ‘Âge d’or’, 1872: ‘One of the voices/ always angelic/ — it is about me — / greenly expresses itself/ . . .and sings at this moment/ like a sister to breath . . .’ (All Rimbaud quotations in these notes are from Oliver Bernard’s excellent translation for the Penguin Collected Poems, 1962.)

13: a delicate cowboy, so blue, his dawn/ sky/ is/ too.] Borrowed from Ed Dorn’s poem ‘Vaquero’: ‘ . . .in the dark brown night/ your delicate cowboy stands quite still./ . . ./ Yi Yi, the cowboy’s eyes/ are blue. The top of the sky/ is too.’ The pun ‘dawn’/ ‘Dorn’ is deliberate.

Appears–in: collected in Red Movie and Other Poems, John Tranter, Cremorne, New South Wales : Angus and Robertson, 1972, p.37.

84: départ! départ’] Arthur Rimbaud, ‘Départ’ (‘Departure’), section eight of ‘Illuminations’.

85: ma faim] Arthur Rimbaud, from the poem ‘Fêtes de la faim’, 1872: ‘Ma faim, Anne, Anne,/ fuis sur ton âne.’ (My hunger: Anne, Anne/ flee on your donkey.’)

112: bona fide travellers] From the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica: bona fide (Latin: in good faith), in law, a term implying the absence of all fraud or unfair dealing or acting. It is usually employed in conjunction with a noun, e.g… . “ bona fide traveller “ under the licensing acts, one whose lodging-place during the preceding night is at least 3 Miles distant from the place where he demands to be supplied with liquor, such distance being calculated by the nearest public thoroughfare. (UK)

Appears–in: collected in Red Movie and Other Poems, John Tranter, Cremorne, New South Wales : Angus and Robertson, 1972, p.38.

Appears–in: The Collins Book of Australian Poetry, Compiler: Rodney Hall, Sydney, New South Wales : William Collins, 1981, p.374; collected in Red Movie and Other Poems, John Tranter, Cremorne, New South Wales : Angus and Robertson, 1972, p.42.

147a: Section title: The Failure of Sentiment and the Evasion of Love] A chapter title from Leslie Fiedler, Love and Death in the American Novel, 1959; revised edition, Stein and Day, 1966.

193: ce n’est rien: jy suis, j’y suis toujours] (‘It is nothing; I am here, I am still here.’): Arthur Rimbaud, May 1872, the last line (italicised in the original) of the poem ‘Qu’est-ce pour nous, mon coeur, que les nappes de sang . . .’ (‘What does it matter to us, my heart, the sheets of blood… ’).

251: Khan coming out of Mongolia — / changes from the outside,/ Egyptian traits… ] Fragments copied from books lying to hand one day in the honi soit offices (the student weekly newspaper) at Sydney University circa 1962; the earliest lines of the author’s to survive into a collection.

Appears–in: collected in Red Movie and Other Poems, John Tranter, Cremorne, New South Wales : Angus and Robertson, 1972, p.42.

254a: Section title: The Knowledge of Our Buried Life] the alarmingly modern words of Matthew Arnold, seeming to presage Freud: ‘But often, in the world’s most crowded streets,/ But often, in the din of strife, there rises an unspeakable desire/ After the knowledge of our buried life… ’

Appears–in: collected in Red Movie and Other Poems, John Tranter, Cremorne, New South Wales : Angus and Robertson, 1972, p.46.

They hold no holidays at the Guadalcanal Motel; Guadalcanal is the largest of the Solomon Islands (in the South Pacific, near the equator) and the site of the national capital Honiara. The Battle of Guadalcanal in 1943 lasted six months, and was a turning point of World War Two, as Allied soldiers, sailors, and airmen forced the Japanese to halt their advance toward Australia. Numerous relics of the Guadalcanal Campaign still litter the plains east of Honiara.

Appears–in: The New Australian Poetry, Editor: John Tranter, St Lucia, Queensland : Makar Press, 1979, p.159.

The European setting is reinforced by the slightly stiff translatese of “The staff of the engineer… ’

19: She: Et mon bureau?] The last line is indeed from Rimbaud’s poem ‘Les réparties de Nina’ (‘Nina’s Replies’), 15 August 1870, and is the deflating last line in that poem. A lovesick youth asks a girl to spend a romantic day in the country with him. He paints an intensely lyrical picture of the good times they will have, enthusiastically and at great length. Finally she interrupts with the complaint ‘Et mon bureau?’; in effect, ‘But what about my job? I have to go to work!’ You can read Rimbaud’s poem here:

Arthur Rimbaud

Les réparties de Nina (Nina’s Replies)

LUI — Ta poitrine sur ma poitrine,
Hein? nous irions,
Ayant de l’air plein la narine,
Aux frais rayons

Du bon matin bleu, qui vous baigne
Du vin de jour?…
Quand tout le bois frissonnant saigne
Muet d’amour

De chaque branche, gouttes vertes,
Des bourgeons clairs,
On sent dans les choses ouvertes
Frémir des chairs :

Tu plongerais dans la luzerne
Ton blanc peignoir,
Rosant à l’air ce bleu qui cerne
Ton grand oeil noir,

Amoureuse de la campagne,
Semant partout,
Comme une mousse de champagne,
Ton rire fou :

Riant à moi, brutal d’ivresse,
Qui te prendrais
Comme cela, — la belle tresse,
Oh ! — qui boirais

Ton goût de framboise et de fraise,
Ô chair de fleur !
Riant au vent vif qui te baise
Comme un voleur,

Au rose, églantier qui t’embête
Aimablement :
Riant surtout, ô folle tête,
À ton amant !…

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

Dix-sept ans ! Tu seras heureuse !
Oh ! les grands prés,
La grande campagne amoureuse !
— Dis, viens plus près !…

— Ta poitrine sur ma poitrine,
Mêlant nos voix,
Lents, nous gagnerions la ravine,
Puis les grands bois !…

Puis, comme une petite morte,
Le coeur pâmé,
Tu me dirais que je te porte,
L’oeil mi-fermé…

Je te porterais, palpitante,
Dans le sentier :
L’oiseau filerait son andante :
Au Noisetier…

Je te parlerais dans ta bouche ;
J’irais, pressant
Ton corps, comme une enfant qu’on couche,
Ivre du sang

Qui coule, bleu, sous ta peau blanche
Aux tons rosés :
Et te parlant la langue franche…
Tiens !… — que tu sais…

Nos grands bois sentiraient la sève,
Et le soleil
Sablerait d’or fin leur grand rêve
Vert et vermeil.

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … .

Le soir?… Nous reprendrons la route
Blanche qui court
Flânant, comme un troupeau qui broute,
Tout à l’entour

Les bons vergers à l’herbe bleue,
Aux pommiers tors !
Comme on les sent toute une lieue
Leurs parfums forts !

Nous regagnerons le village
Au ciel mi-noir ;
Et ça sentira le laitage
Dans l’air du soir ;

Ca sentira l’étable, pleine
De fumiers chauds,
Pleine d’un lent rythme d’haleine,
Et de grands dos

Blanchissant sous quelque lumière ;
Et, tout là-bas,
Une vache fientera, fière,
À chaque pas…

— Les lunettes de la grand-mère
Et son nez long
Dans son missel ; le pot de bière
Cerclé de plomb,

Moussant entre les larges pipes
Qui, crânement,
Fument : les effroyables lippes
Qui, tout fumant,

Happent le jambon aux fourchettes
Tant, tant et plus :
Le feu qui claire les couchettes
Et les bahuts.

Les fesses luisantes et grasses
D’un gros enfant
Qui fourre, à genoux, dans les tasses,
Son museau blanc

Frôlé par un mufle qui gronde
D’un ton gentil,
Et pourlèche la face ronde
Du cher petit…

Noire, rogue au bord de sa chaise,
Affreux profil,
Une vieille devant la braise
Qui fait du fil ;

Que de choses verrons-nous, chère,
Dans ces taudis,
Quand la flamme illumine, claire,
Les carreaux gris !…

— Puis, petite et toute nichée,
Dans les lilas
Noirs et frais : la vitre cachée,
Qui rit là-bas…

Tu viendras, tu viendras, je t’aime !
Ce sera beau.
Tu viendras, n’est-ce pas, et même…

ELLE — Et mon bureau?

— 15 août 1870.

When I wrote this poem (or group of poems) I had not heard of Agatha Christie’s novel The ABC Murders (Collins Crime Club, 1936) nor the films, radio or television dramas based on it. The 1966 film (titled The Alphabet Murders) was directed by Frank Tashlin, and starred Tony Randall, Anita Ekberg and Robert Morley. A BBC guide describes the story thus: ‘Alice Ascher is murdered at Andover. Betty Barnard is strangled at Bexhill-on-Sea. Each time, an ABC railway guide is found by the dead bodies and, each time, Poirot is warned in advance by a letter from someone signed “ABC”. But who is ABC? And can Poirot find out in time to prevent the death of C?’ You can read seven sections from The Alphabet Murders on this site: [»]

Appears–in: collected in The Alphabet Murders: Notes from a Work in Progress (Poets of the Month, Series 1), London, England and Sydney, New South Wales : Angus and Robertson, 1976, p.27–48; collected in Selected Poems, John Tranter, Sydney, New South Wales : Hale and Iremonger, 1982, pp.69–90.

1: After all we have left behind] Echoes the first line of the last section: ‘After all, we had left poetry behind before this trip had even begun’

12: So I write to you ‘from a distant country’] A loose translation of the opening line of Henri Michaux’s prose poem ‘Je Vous Écris d’un Pays Lointain’. See also the poem ‘At Naxos’.

19: there are rumours of a sighting / in Dogubayazit, in northern Turkey] When in 1967 I travelled through the village of Dogubayazit, near Mount Ararat and the Russian and Iranian borders, I recalled that the British spy Kim Philby was briefly seen there by a party of British scientists before he disappeared into Mother Russia, never to return. Top photo: a pile of dung used for fuel, on the outskirts of Dogubayazit, September 1967. Second photo: two boys on a palomino near Mount Ararat, seen from a bus on the road from Dogubayazit to Tabriz (in Iran), September 1967. Russia is in the distant background.

32: retarded or advanced] The speed of a gasoline engine can regulated by retarding or advancing the setting of the electronic spark distributor.

1: Master of Lunacy] The Lunacy Act of 1878 (42 Vic Act No. 7) made provision for the appointment of a Master of Lunacy (the Master in Equity “for the time being… . shall be also the Master in Lunacy”).(1) The Act prescribed that his duties were to “undertake the general care, protection and management or supervision of the management of estates of all insane persons and patients in New South Wales.” State Records, New South Wales Government.

19: as one hog lives on what another shits] Alexander Pope: Now wits gain praise by copying other wits / As one Hog lives on what another sh— . Couplets on Wit, V.

1: forme] A body of metal type locked into a chase (a metal frame) ready for printing.

9: I think constantly on those who blundered badly] A reference to the poem ‘I Think Continually Of Those Who Were Truly Great’ by Stephen Spender

10: Politics will sing you to your rest] From the closing scene of Hamlet: Good night, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!

26: a buried emblem / of the work itself… interlocking blazon] In the essay on John Ashbery in his remarkable study of forty-one US poets Alone With America: The Art of Poetry in the United States Since 1950 (Thames and Hudson, London, 1970), Richard Howard quotes Gide: ‘I like discovering in a work of art… transposed to the scale of the characters, the very subject of that work… Thus in certain paintings… a tiny dark convex mirror reflects the interior of the room where the scene painted occurs… the comparison with that method in heraldry which consists of putting a second blazon in the center of the first, en abyme.’ (pp.19–20)

Appears–in: The Golden Apples of the Sun : Twentieth Century Australian Poetry, Editor: Chris Wallace-Crabbe, Carlton, Victoria : Melbourne University Press, 1980, pp.207–208; collected in The Alphabet Murders: Notes from a Work in Progress (Poets of the Month, Series 1), London, England and Sydney, New South Wales : Angus and Robertson, 1976, p.27–48; collected in Selected Poems, John Tranter, Sydney, New South Wales : Hale and Iremonger, 1982, pp.69–90.

4: Gateau d’Ivresse] The cake of drunkenness — a poor pun on Rimbaud’s ‘Le Bateau ivre’ (The Drunken Boat).

5: It’s his Seven-League Boots… ] The last lines of Robert Desnos’ poem ‘Recontre’ (Meeting): (C’est les bottes de sept lieues / cette phrase: ‘Je me vois’.) (It’s the seven league boots / this sentence: “I see myself.”) The parentheses are included in the original.

Title: after R D FitzGerald] R D FitzGerald (1902–1987), Australian poet and critic. The stanza is a parody of an article he published in Southerly magazine, urging young poets not to abandon tradition. More than half the words and phrases are FitzGerald’s.

4: knight] This piece quotes some scholars on the topic of Sir Thomas Malory’s life, his identity and his epic Le Morte D’Arthur (‘cathedral of words’), authors recommended to me in 1974 by Stephen Knight, then at the University of Sydney.

13: ill-framed accretions] Meant to echo the title of one of my sources: Matthews, William. The Ill-framed Knight: A Skeptical Inquiry into the Identity of Sir Thomas Malory. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966. The name ‘Malory’ can mean ‘ill-framed’.

4: Maugham’s club foot] The playwright, novelist and short story writer W. Somerset Maugham suffered from a bad stammer, as I did when young. In his autobiographical novel Of Human Bondage Maugham’s stammer is metamorphosed into the hero Philip Carey’s club foot. I’ve often wondered what he would have come up with had he written a biography of the Romantic poet George Gordon, Lord Byron, who had a club foot. Would he have made him a stammerer?

11: Doppler shifts] Johann Christian Doppler (1803–1853) first demonstrated that sound waves appear to rise in pitch as the source of the sound approaches, and fall in pitch as the source of the sound travels away from the observer. A passing ambulance gives the same frequency shift effect. At radio frequencies, the Doppler shift is an important component of radar detection, as in police radar speed-measuring equipment.

12: pulse-code modulation] PCM is the first widely-used method of encoding, transmitting and reproducing high-quality stereo sound for later FM transmission, developed by Philips/Sony. In June 1978 PCM consumer audio recording began with the introduction of the PCM-1 14-bit Betamax accessory for recording and playback of digital audio with an 80db dynamic range. PCM forms the basis for CD music recordings.

Appears–in: The Penguin Book of Modern Australian Poetry, Ed. Tranter, John, and Mead, Philip. Ringwood, Victoria : Penguin, 1991, p.276; collected in The Alphabet Murders: Notes from a Work in Progress (Poets of the Month, Series 1), London, England and Sydney, New South Wales : Angus and Robertson, 1976, pp.27–48; collected in Selected Poems, John Tranter, Sydney, New South Wales : Hale and Iremonger, 1982, pp.69–90.

25: the Legendary Profile] A cool and mysterious tune composed and played by the Modern Jazz Quartet: The Legendary Profile (Atlantic, SD-1623, 1972).

1: After all, we had left poetry behind before this trip had even begun] Echoes the first line of the poem: ‘After all we have left behind’

In 1957 I enrolled as a boarder at Hurlstone Agricultural High School, at Glenfield near Liverpool on the south-western outskirts of Sydney. The 200-mile journey from my home town in the bush was by bus and train.

Appears–in: collected in Crying in Early Infancy : 100 Sonnets, John Tranter, St Lucia, Queensland : Makar Press, 1977, title: 41, p.27. Appears–in:

The poem is derivative of some imagery from Howard Nemerov (‘Storm Windows’) and Robert Bly, both of whose work appears in Donald Hall’s anthology Contemporary American Poetry published by Penguin in 1962. Hall’s anthology was a recommended text in a class on poetry at the University of Sydney which I attended in the late 1960s, a class taught by Don Anderson.

Appears–in: The New Australian Poetry, Editor: John Tranter, St Lucia, Queensland : Makar Press, 1979, p.163; collected in Crying in Early Infancy : 100 Sonnets, John Tranter, St Lucia, Queensland : Makar Press, 1977, title: 30, p.22.

When I began work as Senior Education Editor at Angus and Robertson in 1971, then Australia’s most prestigious publisher, my tools of trade included the Manual of Style published by the University of Chicago Press. I still refer to my 1969 edition from time to time.

Appears–in: Makar vol.12 no.2 December 1976, p.18; The Sting in the Wattle : Australian Satirical Verse, Editor: Philip Neilsen, St Lucia, Queensland : University of Queensland Press, 1993, p.196; The Indigo Book of Modern Australian Sonnets, Editor: Geoff Page, ACT, Ginninderra Press, 2003, p.101; the Internet site of the OpenOffice bibliography coding team homepage (2005) at <http: //bibliographic.openoffice.org/poetry.html>; collected in Crying in Early Infancy : 100 Sonnets, John Tranter, St Lucia, Queensland : Makar Press, 1977, title: 71, p.42.

I painted seriously — though intermittently — for a decade from the age of sixteen. Eventually my painting mutated into printmaking, then into photography, typography and print design.

Appears–in: collected in Crying in Early Infancy : 100 Sonnets, John Tranter, St Lucia, Queensland : Makar Press, 1977, title: 34, p.24.

Appears–in: The Oxford Book of Modern Australian Verse, Editor: Peter Porter, Oxford University Press, 1996, pp.174; collected in Crying in Early Infancy : 100 Sonnets, John Tranter, St Lucia, Queensland : Makar Press, 1977, p.

3: Mandrax] The Australian brand name of a hypnotic prescription drug popular in the 1970s, methalaqualone, known commonly as ‘Mandies’, and known in the US as Quaaludes.

Appears–in: The Collins Book of Australian Poetry, Compiler: Rodney Hall, Sydney, New South Wales : William Collins, 1981, pp.374–375; collected in Crying in Early Infancy : 100 Sonnets, John Tranter, St Lucia, Queensland : Makar Press, 1977, title: 38, p.26.

The poem was written in the mid-1970s, when the Vietnam War was still very much in people’s minds.

Appears–in: The New Australian Poetry, Editor: John Tranter, St Lucia, Queensland : Makar Press, 1979, p.165; The Faber Book of Modern Australian Verse, Editor: Vincent Buckley, London, England : Faber, 1991, p.220; The Indigo Book of Modern Australian Sonnets, Editor: Geoff Page, ACT, Ginninderra Press, 2003, p.59; collected in Crying in Early Infancy : 100 Sonnets, John Tranter, St Lucia, Queensland : Makar Press, 1977, title: 63, p.38.

14. a manual on the implements of death] Les Murray’s poem SMLE (about the Lee Enfield .303 rifle, standard issue to Australian and British troops for over fifty years) was published Southerly vol.30 no.3 1970, pp.177–181. It contains the memorable line ‘my Lee Enfield goes home / slung athwart my shoulder, heavy as talent.’ The standard Lee Enfield .303 weighs about four kilograms.

Appears–in: Makar vol.12 no.2 December 1976, p.16; collected in Crying in Early Infancy : 100 Sonnets, John Tranter, St Lucia, Queensland : Makar Press, 1977, title: 54, p.34.

3: Frank Moorhouse’s novel] His third book, The Electrical Experience, in which, through the middle years of the twentieth century, the lead character manages a cinema in a small Australian country town rather like Nowra, on the South Coast of New South Wales, where Moorhouse grew up. In the late 1950s as a teenager I travelled with my father to Nowra; there he bought a large stainless steel mixing vat (for the carbonated drink factory which he had established in the coastal town of Moruya, a hundred miles distant) from the factory of ‘Moorhouse the Machinery Man’. In an interview with the 12 January 2004 edition of the Sydney weekly The Bulletin he answered the question ‘Were there any writers in your family?’ thus: ‘The genetic history would be that my father was an inventor. He made dairy equipment and, although he was self educated, he was one of the pioneers around the time of electricity coming into rural communities and into dairying. He set up a factory in Nowra. He was also part of that Ferguson tractor revolution and he had the south coast franchise for the Ferguson tractor and a Swedish milking machine. Both my parents were publicly active in town organisations and at state level: in the Country Women’s Association, the Liberal Party, Rotary — my father was a very good Rotarian and also a very important member of the Masonic Lodge. So by the time I came along they were well established. They read books from a book club and there were books of poetry in the house, there were classics, but neither of them would be described as literary. The genetic connection I think is with the inventive.’

6: Sabre]: a US-made jet fighter, the F-86 Sabre, used by the UN forces in Korea 1950–1953.

8: ruthless MiG.] The MiG-15, the first Soviet supersonic jet aircraft, used in the Korean War, named after Artem Mi(koyan) and Mikhail G(urevich), Russian aircraft designers; hence the lower-case ‘i’.

Appears–in: The New Australian Poetry, Editor: John Tranter, St Lucia, Queensland : Makar Press, 1979, pp.164–165; collected in Crying in Early Infancy : 100 Sonnets, John Tranter, St Lucia, Queensland : Makar Press, 1977, title: 57, p.35.

Appears–in: The Collins Book of Australian Poetry, Compiler: Rodney Hall, Sydney, New South Wales : William Collins, 1981, p.375; collected in Crying in Early Infancy : 100 Sonnets, John Tranter, St Lucia, Queensland : Makar Press, 1977, title: 61, p.37.

Appears–in: Makar vol.12 no.2 December 1976, p.17; Contemporary Australian Poetry : An Anthology, Editor: John Leonard, Knoxfield, Victoria : Houghton Mifflin, 1990, pp.136–137; collected in Crying in Early Infancy : 100 Sonnets, John Tranter, St Lucia, Queensland : Makar Press, 1977, title: 64, p.39.

Appears–in: Meanjin vol.33 no.1 Autumn 1974, p.85; collected in Crying in Early Infancy : 100 Sonnets, John Tranter, St Lucia, Queensland : Makar Press, 1977, title: 68, p.41.

Appears–in: Nation Review, 21–27 April 1977, 648; The New Australian Poetry, Editor: John Tranter, St Lucia, Queensland : Makar Press, 1979, p.165; Australian Verse : An Oxford Anthology, Editor: John Leonard, Oxford University Press, 1998, p.82; collected in Crying in Early Infancy : 100 Sonnets, St Lucia, Queensland : Makar Press, 1977, (title: 89; with this first line: I’d like to throw an epileptic fit), p.51.

Appears–in: Australian Verse : An Oxford Anthology, Editor: John Leonard, Oxford University Press, 1998, pp.82–83; collected in Crying in Early Infancy : 100 Sonnets, St Lucia, Queensland : Makar Press, 1977, p.52 (titled: 90)

2: Bohemian Balmain] In the late 1960s the Sydney harbourside suburb of Balmain, once a working-class shipbuilding area, gained a reputation for its bohemian subculture and its throngs of young writers and painters, attracted by the cheap rents and nearness to the city. The rents are no longer cheap and the city is no longer important as a meeting place. The shipping container wharves that in the late 1960s disfigured the shores of Mort Bay in Balmain have been replaced by a park. In the early decade of the twenty-first century the author could regularly be seen in that park walking his dog Tiger, a Manchester terrier.

Appears–in: The Indigo Book of Modern Australian Sonnets, Editor: Geoff Page, ACT, Ginninderra Press, 2003, p.23; collected in Crying in Early Infancy : 100 Sonnets, St Lucia, Queensland : Makar Press, 1977, title: 95, p.54.

1: FAMOUS POET] The poem is (very loosely) a response to the visit to Australia in 1976 of US poet Robert Duncan, hosted partly by Robert Adamson in Sydney. I was living in Brisbane at the time and did not meet Duncan during his visit. I met and interviewed him in San Francisco nearly a decade later. See Jacket magazine, number 28: <http: //jacketmagazine.com/26/dunc-tran-iv.html>

Appears–in: The New Australian Poetry, Editor: John Tranter, St Lucia, Queensland : Makar Press, 1979, pp.161–162; The Oxford Book of Modern Australian Verse, Editor: Peter Porter, Oxford University Press, 1996, pp.174; collected in Crying in Early Infancy : 100 Sonnets, John Tranter, St Lucia, Queensland : Makar Press, 1977.

Col Joye (stage name of Colin Jakobsen) and his brother Kevin were entrepreneurs of popular music in Australia from the late 1950s; Colin headed a rock band called ‘Col Joye and the Joye Boys.’

Title] The title is a pun on Schiller’s ‘Ode to Joy (‘An die Freude’, 1785), set to music by Beethoven in his Ninth Symphony.

11: a faint vapour trail/ across the Malayan sky] John Forbes’s father was a civilian meteorologist with the Royal Australian Air Force and John lived for some years as a child on the air force base at Butterworth in Malaya, near Penang.

70: Canberra poet] in the 1970s the poet Les Murray attracted a school of morally serious acolytes (Alan Gould, Kevin Hart, and Mark O’Connor) in Australia’s capital, Canberra, where the poet Professor A.D.Hope was also influential.

76: South Coast Haiku] Laurie Duggan’s deeply ironic ‘South Coast Haiku’ is about young counter-cultural people dropping out and living close to nature on the South Coast of New South Wales: ‘Rain drips through/ The tin roof/ Missing the stereo.’

87: Doug Anthony … The Land] Doug Anthony, a wealthy grazier and deputy Prime Minister of Australia for many years, was leader of the Country Party, a rural political party allied in a coalition with the conservative Liberal Party which ruled Australia for 23 years under Menzies, and later under other leaders. The Land is a newspaper for farmers.

90: Bob Adamson … bank robber] Australian poet Robert Adamson spent some years of his youth in reform school and jail. The death of the bank robber in a nearby suburb happened not long before the poem was written.

116: a beat-up Renault, how/ Sydney, and how French!] An oblique reference to Ken Bolton’s book Blonde and French, whose title refers to the first line of Frank O’Hara’s poem ‘Meditations in an Emergency’: ‘Am I to become profligate as if I were blonde? Or religious as if I were French?’

108: a poem by Auden] the poem is ‘On the Circuit’, about a poetry reading tour through the US, and in fact ends ‘Another morning comes: I see / Dwindling below me on the plane, / The roofs of one more audience / I shall not see again. / / God bless the lot of them, although / I don’t remember which was which: / God bless the U.S.A., so large, / So friendly, and so rich.’

151: Martin Duwell] The Brisbane-based academic and publisher of three of the author’s books: The Blast Area, Crying in Early Infancy: 100 Sonnets, and the anthology The New Australian Poetry. Martin is a scholar of Icelandic, and had travelled to Iceland. ‘Reykjavik’ was misspelled in the first printing.

163: Don Chipp] Renegade from the ruling conservative Liberal Party, the founder of the splinter Australian political party the Democrats (in 1977), a middle-class, earnest and socially concerned party which for many years held the balance of power in the Senate, the upper house of review in the Australian Parliament. Their motto: ‘Keep the bastards honest’. Twenty years on, party leader Meg Lees betrayed a promise of her own (at the Australian National Press Club: ‘We will not vote for a tax on books’) when she did a deal with the (conservative) Liberals to impose a ten per cent federal sales tax on books. May she rot in Hell: so much for ‘honest’ politicians. The Democrats’ moral coign of vantage has since been occupied by the Greens.

Appears–in: Surfers Paradise 2, Erskineville NSW, March 1979; The Penguin Book of Australian Satirical Verse, Editor: Philip Neilsen, Ringwood, Victoria : Penguin, 1986, pp.258–262.

4: Einstein… telescope] Taken from a televised documentary about the great man at Princeton.

11: Are you now or have you ever been a woman?] Based on the standard question asked at the US House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) hearings. After declaring that Hollywood filmmakers “employed subtle techniques in pictures glorifying the Communist system,” the House Un-American Activities Committee held public hearings in October 1947 to question 24 “friendly” and 11 “unfriendly” witnesses from the filmmaking industry. Ten of the 11 “unfriendly” witnesses — including director Edward Dmytryk (“Crossfire,” 1947) screenwriter Ring Lardner Jr. (“Woman of the Year,” 1942) and writer Dalton Trumbo (“Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo,” 1944) — were jailed for contempt of Congress and blacklisted by the studios after refusing to answer the question “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?” Among the 24 “friendly” witnesses who testified at the HUAC hearings were actors Gary Cooper and Ronald Reagan, producer Walt Disney and writer Ayn Rand. Excerpts from their testimony can be viewed at http: //www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/episodes/06/documents/huac/.

16: Mickey Finn] A solution of chloral hydrate (a sedative/ hypnotic) in alcohol. The term originally referred to a strong purgative which a bartender might slip into an unruly customer’s drink to get rid of him in a hurry.

23: pentothal] Earnest Volwiler and Donalee Tabern came up with the short acting barbiturate Pentothal (1936) when they were seeking an anesthetic which could be injected directly into the bloodstream.

Appears–in: Grand Street [US] no. 49 April 1991; The Poetry Kit [UK] at http: //www.poetrykit.org/; The Penguin Book of Modern Australian Poetry, Editors: John Tranter, and Philip Mead, Penguin Australia, 1991, p.278.

Trotsky was murdered on Stalin’s orders, with an ice-pick blow to the skull, in August 1940, in his house near Mexico City. The assassin was Ramon Mercader, a Spanish-born agent for the Soviet secret police.

Title: Leavis] Frank Raymond Leavis (1895–1978), an important twentieth-century British literary critic based in Cambridge. Leavis edited (1932–1953) the journal Scrutiny, whose contributors saw themselves, Leavis later said, as ‘the essential Cambridge in spite of Cambridge.’ The journal combined an intense concern with literature and morality with an interest in practical criticism.

Title: The London Hotel] in the Sydney suburb of Balmain. In its early days it was called ‘The Circular Saw’. Through the nineteenth century the whine of steam-driven circular saws could be heard all over Balmain as they cut planks for the boats being built at Mort’s shipyard, the main employer of labour in the area.

10: bandages and a black eye … Humphrey Bogart] In the 1947 movie Dark Passage, set in San Francisco, Humphrey Bogart escapes from prison after being framed for his wife’s murder. He hides out (with Lauren Bacall) and undergoes plastic surgery in an attempt to find the real killer. The first part of the movie is shot from the hero’s point of view; we first see his face after the surgery, when the bandages come off in a taxi. Guess who he looks like?

16: ‘Mad Dog’] In the movie High Sierra (1941) Bogart plays Roy “Mad Dog” Earle, who is helped to escape from prison by an old acquaintance. He joins up with two younger gangsters for a jewel robbery. Things go wrong, of course, and a man is shot and killed. Pursued by the police and an angry press, Earle holes up in the Sierra Nevada mountains.

18: Rum & Coca-Cola] The title of a popular calypso song. Originally composed by Lord Invader and Lionel Belasco, it was copyrighted in the United States by entertainer Morey Amsterdam and became a huge hit, selling some four million singles when a version was released in 1945 by the Andrews Sisters. Although the song was published in the United States with Amsterdam listed as the lyricist and Jeri Sullavan and Paul Baron as musical composers, the melody had been previously published as the work of Trinidadian calypso composer Lionel Belasco on a song titled L’Année Passée, which was in turn based on a folksong from Martinique. The original lyrics to Rum and Coca-Cola were written by Rupert Grant, another calypso musician from Trinidad who went by the stage name of Lord Invader. According to Lord Invader, “Calypso is the folklore of Trinidad, a style of poetry, telling about current events in song. Back home in the West Indies, Trinidad, where I’m from, it’s a small island, I’m proud of it. I was traveling on a bus, someplace they call Point Cumana, a bathing resort, and I happened to see the G.I.s in the American social invasion in the West Indies, Trinidad. You know the girls used to get the candies and stuff like that, and they go to the canteens with the boys and so on, have fun. So I noticed since the G.I.s come over there, they generally chase with soda, ordinary soda, but the chaser was rum and Coke. They drink rum, and they like Coca-Cola as a chaser, so I studied that as an idea of a song, and Morey Amsterdam had the nerve to say that he composed that song back here.” The song became a local hit and was at the peak of its popularity when Amsterdam visited the island in September 1943 as part of a U.S.O. tour. Although he subsequently claimed never to have heard the song during the month he spent on the island, the lyrics to his version are clearly based on the Lord Invader version, with the music and chorus being virtually identical. However, Amsterdam’s version strips the song of its social commentary. The Lord Invader version laments that U.S. soldiers are debauching local women, who “saw that the Yankees treat them nice / and they give them a better price.” Its final stanza describes a newlywed couple whose marriage is ruined when “the bride run away with a soldier lad / and the stupid husband went staring mad.” By contrast, the Amsterdam version obscures the implication that women are prostituting themselves, and actually celebrates the Yankee presence: ‘Since the Yankee come to Trinidad / They got the young girls all goin’ mad / Young girls say they treat ‘em nice / Make Trinidad like paradise.’

The Andrews Sisters also seem to have given little thought to the meaning of the lyrics. According to Patty Andrews, “We had a recording date, and the song was brought to us the night before the recording date. We hardly really knew it, and when we went in we had some extra time and we just threw it in, and that was the miracle of it. It was actually a faked arrangement. There was no written background, so we just kind of faked it.” Years later, Maxine Andrews recalled, “The rhythm was what attracted the Andrews Sisters to Rum and Coca-Cola. We never thought of the lyric. The lyric was there, it was cute, but we didn’t think of what it meant; but at that time, nobody else would think of it either, because we weren’t as morally open as we are today and so, a lot of stuff — really — no excuses — just went over our heads.” (Wikipedia)

The hotel is in a Sydney suburb, Forest Lodge, adjacent to the University of Sydney; in the 1970s it was a haunt of students, junkies, drunks and others.

5: General Paresis] A late manifestation of syphilis, characterized by progressive dementia and paralysis.

16: Suzanne Pleshette] US actress, b.1937, star of Rage to Live (1965) and other movies. A reviewer describes that film thus: ‘A badly executed adaptation of John O’Hara’s novel starring Pleshette as a young, wealthy nymphomaniac who has numerous affairs with her mother’s country club friends.’ It might be hard to credit, but the title ‘Rage to Live’ is taken from some lines of Alexander Pope (from ‘Moral Essays: Epistle to a Lady’): Wise Wretch! with Pleasures too refin’d to please, / With too much Spirit to be e’er at ease, / With too much Quickness ever to be taught, / With too much Thinking to have common Thought: / Who purchase Pain with all that joy can give, / And die of nothing but a Rage to live.

18: Ladies Lounge] Usually spelled thus. In Australian hotels or pubs until the 1970s, a public bar reserved for ladies and their partners where unaccompanied men were not allowed, and where alcohol was served. Women were not allowed in the main public bar in most hotels.

Title: ‘Exiles’ Bookshop] … was established by Susumu Hirayanagi and Nicholas Pounder at 207 Oxford Street, Sydney, in February 1979, and closed in late 1982. This poem was written before the German poet Hans Magnus Enzensberger had ever considered visiting Australia. It was published by Nicholas Pounder in Polar Bear magazine, in an issue (the only issue published) devoted to Enzensberger, and the poem was displayed in the window of the shop when Enzensberger called by in 1981.

Appears–in: Polar Bear magazine (date: ?), The Penguin Book of Modern Australian Poetry, Editors: John Tranter, and Philip Mead, Penguin Australia, 1991, p.277.

9: E.N.G.] Electronic News Gathering; i.e. with portable video cameras linked by radio to head office, rather than with the older film cameras and tape recorders. The poem reflects morale problems and union unrest within the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in the late 1970s.

20: William Street] The author worked in the ABC Radio Drama and Features Department in Sydney in the 1970s and 1980s as a radio producer. His office was on the corner of William and Burke Streets, Darlinghurst, with the recording studios a block or two away.

An old episode of Star Trek is being filmed. At the same time, or perhaps centuries later, a bored crew of aliens in a spaceship sit up late to watch it.

3–6: decimate [… .] one in ten of us] ‘Decimate’ originally referred to the killing of every tenth person, a punishment used in the Roman army for mutinous legions.

9: As when a detective in the spring] See Matthew Arnold’s ‘Sohrab and Rustum’, lines 556–575:

As when some hunter in the spring hath found
A breeding eagle sitting on her nest,
Upon the craggy isle of a hill-lake,
And pierced her with an arrow as she rose,
And follow’d her to find her where she fell
Far off; — anon her mate comes winging back
From hunting, and a great way off descries
His huddling young left sole; at that, he checks
His pinion, and with short uneasy sweeps
Circles above his eyry, with loud screams
Chiding his mate back to her nest; but she
Lies dying, with the arrow in her side,
In some far stony gorge out of his ken,
A heap of fluttering feathers — never more
Shall the lake glass her, flying over it;
Never the black and dripping precipices
Echo her stormy scream as she sails by —
As that poor bird flies home, nor knows his loss,
So Rustum knew not his own loss, but stood
Over his dying son, and knew him not.

28: a holiday at Dover] Matthew Arnold’s mournful poem ‘Dover Beach’ was published in 1876. Anthony Hecht’s hilarious parody, ‘The Dover Bitch’, begins: ‘So there stood Matthew Arnold and this girl / With the cliffs of England crumbling away behind them… ’ and continues: ‘And then she got really angry. To have been brought / All the way down from London, and then be addressed / As a sort of mournful cosmic last resort / Is really tough on a girl, and she was pretty. / Anyway, she watched him pace the room / And finger his watch-chain and seem to sweat a bit, / And then she said one or two unprintable things… ’ You can read it here: [»]

Appears–in: Southerly vol.39 no.3 September 1979, p.245; The New Oxford Book of Australian Verse, Editor: Les A. Murray, Melbourne, Victoria : Oxford University Press, 1986, p.323–324, 1996 edition, pp.329–330; The Penguin Book of Modern Australian Poetry, Ed. Tranter, John, and Mead, Philip. Ringwood, Victoria : Penguin, 1991, p.279; The Flight of the Emu : contemporary light verse, Editor: Geoffrey Lehmann, North Ryde, New South Wales : Angus and Robertson, 1990, pp.40–41.

4: Rupert Murdoch / crawling over Fleet Street] Australian Rupert Murdoch moved to Britain in the mid 1960s and rapidly became a major force there after his acquisitions of the News of the World, The Sun and later The Times and The Sunday Times, which he bought in 1981 from the Thomson family, who had bought it from the Astor family in 1966. Both takeovers further reinforced his growing reputation as a ruthless and cunning business operator. (Wikipedia)

6: shrug off an empire] The two death-knells for the British Empire were the fall of Singapore to the Japanese army in February 1942, and the disaster of the Suez Campaign in 1956, a war occasioned by Egyptian leader Nasser’s threat to nationalise the Suez Canal, and fought on Egyptian soil between the Egyptians on one hand and a secret alliance between France, the United Kingdom and Israel on the other.

When this poem was first published in Southerly (vol.41 no.4) in December 1981 it had an extra three lines at the front: An Aussie battler fronts a toff in Chelsea: / ‘Hiya, bud! A piastre for your thoughts!’ Too late / the Brits remember Suez, and they die of shame. Aussie battler: in Australian culture, the Aussie Battler, who must work hard at a low paying job to earn enough money, is respected by Australian society at large for stoically facing financial hardships. (Wikipedia). Toff: an elegantly dressed upper-class man, especially one with affected manners.

Appears–in: Southerly vol.41 no.4 December 1981, p.429; Contemporary Australian Poetry : An Anthology, Editor: John Leonard, Knoxfield, Victoria : Houghton Mifflin, 1990, p.137; On the Move : Australian Poets in Europe, Editor: Geoff Page, Springwood, New South Wales : Butterfly Books, 1992, p.7; The Poetry Kit UK http: //www.poetrykit.org/;

2: the barbecue sausages / speaking the language of rain deceitfully] I worked as a radio producer for years, producing around forty radio plays. The opening image is based on the fact that the sound effect of a crackling fire, the sound effect of sausages spitting on a barbecue and the sound effect of distant water splashing onto concrete are all remarkably similar.

28: a Southerly Buster at dusk] When this poem was published in Harper’s in New York, the editor asked me if I’d like to provide a footnote to explain the cocktail mentioned in the last line. A Southerly Buster is in fact a gusty cold southerly wind which — if you’re lucky — appears at the end of a hot summer day in Sydney.

Appears–in: An Inflection of Silence and Other Poems, Editor: Christopher Pollnitz, University of Newcastle, 1986, p.136; collected in Under Berlin: New Poems 1988, University of Queensland Press, 1988, p.1; The Penguin Book of Modern Australian Poetry, Editors: John Tranter, Philip Mead, Penguin, 1991, p.280; Sydney’s Poems: A Selection on the Occasion of the City’s One Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary 1842–1992, Editors: Robert Gray; Vivian Smith, Primavera Press, 1992, pp.71–72; Family Ties: Australian Poems of the Family, Editor: Jennifer Strauss, Oxford University Press, 1998, pp.191–192; Thylazine magazine, Thylazine’s Special Feature : Poets at Work, 2002.

The house I grew up in, far from the nearest town, was perched on a hill with a view forty miles up a river valley to the mountains of the Great Dividing Range. It had a deep open veranda on three sides. In the thousand square miles of rugged country to the west lived perhaps seven or eight people. The photo of the house, above, was taken in 1981, twenty years after I had left home for good. The camera is facing west.

Appears–in: An Inflection of Silence and Other Poems, Editor: Christopher Pollnitz, University of Newcastle, 1986, p.134; collected in Under Berlin: New Poems 1988 University of Queensland Press, 1988, p.2; Australian Poetry in the Twentieth Century, Editors: Robert Gray, Geoffrey Lehmann, Heinemann, 1991, p.360; The Oxford Book of Modern Australian Verse, Editor: Peter Porter, Oxford University Press, 1996, pp.174–175.

In the northern hemisphere, where photography was invented, ‘north light’ is ideal for portrait photographs, as it shines from that part of the sky where there is no direct sun, and the light is even and diffused. In the Sydney where this poem is set, north light is the direct glare of the sun.

Appears–in: An Inflection of Silence and Other Poems, Editor: Christopher Pollnitz, University of Newcastle, 1986, p.142; collected in Under Berlin: New Poems 1988 University of Queensland Press, 1988, p.8.

1: the dull red glow] The narrow energy band of red or amber light, at low levels, does not affect photographic printing paper and was thus used as a ‘safe-light’ to provide some illumination in photographic darkrooms. The chemical development of photograph paper is now (in 2006) almost obsolete.

Appears–in: An Inflection of Silence and Other Poems, Editor: Christopher Pollnitz, University of Newcastle, 1986, p.143; collected in Under Berlin: New Poems 1988 University of Queensland Press, 1988, p.9;

Appears–in: Meanjin vol.46 no.2 Winter 1987, pp.186–187; The Age (Melbourne) 22 January 1992, Section: Tempo, p.5; London Review of Books (date?); Australian Verse : An Oxford Anthology, Editor: John Leonard, Oxford University Press, 1998, pp.84–85; The Penguin Book of Modern Australian Poetry, Editors: John Tranter, Philip Mead, Penguin Australia, 1991, pp.281–282; collected in Under Berlin: New Poems 1988, University of Queensland Press, 1988, pp.18–19.

Sometimes I think that the ghosts of the literary critics Matthew Arnold and F.R. Leavis lurk behind this poem.

Appears–in: The Phoenix Review Special Issue, Winter 1987, p.74; Agenda (UK) (date?); Surfers Paradise (‘Voodoo’ was then titled ‘Lingua Franca’; date?); Thylazine magazine, Thylazine’s Special Feature : Poets at Work, 2002; Landbridge : contemporary Australian poetry, Editor: John Kinsella, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1999, p.298; Australian Verse : An Oxford Anthology, Editor: John Leonard, Oxford University Press, 1998, p.83; Australian Poetry in the Twentieth Century, Editors: Robert Gray, Geoffrey Lehmann, Heinemann, 1991, pp.361–362; collected in Under Berlin: New Poems 1988, University of Queensland Press, 1988, pp.21–22.

Appears–in: Meanjin vol.43 no.4 Summer 1984; London Review of Books (date?); collected in Under Berlin: New Poems 1988, University of Queensland Press, 1988, p.24.

Originally filmed in 3-D, this 1954 movie was directed by Jack Arnold. See note for High School Confidential, below. The actor Ben Chapman played the role of the creature; here he is in costume, below.

29: Duck and cover!] The title of a widely-circulated 1951 US Civil Defense film for children in which Bert the Turtle shows what to do in case of atomic attack. It is in the public domain. You can see poster for the film here:

You can also download a 3-Megabyte QuickTime version of the entire movie with musical sound-track here: [»]

31: like a dead / king] William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act V, Scene i, Lines 210–216: Hamlet: ‘… Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth to dust; the dust is earth; of earth we make loam; and why of that loam whereto he was converted might they not stop a beer barrel? Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay, / Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.’

Appears–in: The Weekend Australian Magazine 26–27 October 1985, p.17; Web Del Sol http: //www.webdelsol.com/ (no date); Eye Dialect 4, Spring 2001 http: //www.contemporarypoetry.com/dialect/issuefour.htm; collected in Under Berlin: New Poems 1988, University of Queensland Press, 1988, p.31.

This 1958 monochrome rock’n’roll movie was directed by Jack Arnold, who also directed The Creature from the Black Lagoon.

Appears–in: Meanjin vol.44 no.2 Winter 1985; London Review of Books (date?); Verse (UK); collected in Under Berlin: New Poems 1988, University of Queensland Press, 1988, p.33.

A lumbering giant in its time, and biggest of the immediately post-war transports, the Boeing 377 Stratocruiser was the airliner version of the 367 Boeing Stratofreighter, which in turn was the transport version of B-29 Superfortress bomber.

It first flew on July 8, 1947. It had four 3,500 hp propeller engines and two pressurised decks seating up to a hundred passengers on transatlantic routes. Only fifty-five civil examples were sold and the type is chiefly remembered because it usually had a downstairs bar (in what had been the bomb bay). When Dylan Thomas flew to the US in 1953 he spent the entire trip in the downstairs bar. In those days it was a long trip. In 1946 it took twenty hours to fly from New York to Paris, with two refuelling stops, at Shannon in Ireland and Gander in Newfoundland.

Appears–in: Web Del Sol http: //www.webdelsol.com/; Eye Dialect no. 4, http: //www.contemporarypoetry.com/dialect/issuefour.htm, April 2001; collected in Under Berlin: New Poems 1988, University of Queensland Press, 1988, p.34.

Laminex is a trademarked laminated decorative and hard-wearing plastic surface for table and counter tops.

Appears–in: The Weekend Australian Magazine 27–28 July 1985, p.21; Verse (UK); collected in Under Berlin: New Poems 1988, University of Queensland Press, 1988, p.42.

The poem reconstructs a flight over the European Alps in 1984. The poem won a prize on the occasion of The Australian newspaper’s twentieth anniversary. I don’t often go in for free brand-name plugs, but this one seemed just right for the image of Teutonic scientific precision the poem opens with.

16: the snow-drifts on the north side / of the woods and model villages] In 1989 I prepared some notes for a poetry reading on ABC radio: This… poem is set specifically a few thousand feet above the European Alps, travelling North… in a small plane flying from Venice to Munich, in Southern Germany. I get as frightened in a plane as most people — it really is an unnatural act, isn’t it, for a human to fly through the air — and underneath the poem I’m sure you can hear all sorts of anxieties rustling about. And though the poem addresses issues like contemporary technology, and art and the European Renaissance, it does all this through Australian eyes — for example, I was fascinated to notice from the air that a shadow-print of unmelted snow (this was in the Spring) lay alongside objects like fences and buildings, always (of course, when you think about it) on the North side of the objects. In Europe, the sun shines from the South, and first melts all the snow it can reach. From the plane, the landscape had the look of a map with an odd double-image effect. I assume a European would hardly have noticed something so obvious. The photograph above was taken on that flight, above southern Germany.

Appears–in: The Australian 1986; Poems : Selected from The Australian’s 20th Anniversary Competition, Editors: Judith Rodriguez, Andrew Taylor, North Ryde, New South Wales: Angus and Robertson, 1985, p.85; New American Writing 1996; The New Oxford Book of Australian Verse, Editor: Les A. Murray, Melbourne, Victoria : Oxford University Press, 1986, p.324; Contemporary Australian Poetry : An Anthology, Editor: John Leonard, Knoxfield, Victoria : Houghton Mifflin, 1990, p.138; The Macmillan Anthology of Australian Literature, Editors: Ken Goodwin and Alan Lawson, South Melbourne, Victoria : Macmillan, 1990, p.385; The Penguin Book of Modern Australian Poetry, Editors: John Tranter and Philip Mead, Ringwood, Victoria : Penguin, 1991, pp.285–286; On the Move : Australian Poets in Europe, Editor: Geoff Page, Springwood, New South Wales : Butterfly Books, 1992, p.52; Changing Places : Australian Writers in Europe 1960s–1990s, Editors: Laurie Hergenhan and Irmtraud Petersson, St Lucia, Queensland : University of Queensland Press, 1994, p.142; The New Oxford Book of Australian Verse, Editor: Les A. Murray, South Melbourne, Victoria : Oxford University Press, 1996, pp.330–331; Landbridge : contemporary Australian poetry , Editor: John Kinsella, North Fremantle, Western Australia : Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1999, p.296; collected in Under Berlin: New Poems 1988, University of Queensland Press, 1988, p.46.

11: one on top, / and then his double.] The poem was written when the poets Robert Hass and Robert Pinsky were young. They each went on to become Poet Laureate of the United States of America in their middle age, Hass from 1995 to 1997, and his friend Pinsky walking in the door as Hass walked out, Laureate from 1997 to 2000.

21: The sun… rises, rhododactylos] ‘Rosy-fingered’, an epithet for the dawn often used by Homer.

Appears–in: Kunapipi vol.8 no.3 1986, pp.41–42; The Adelaide Review no.36 March 1987, p.15; collected in Under Berlin: New Poems 1988, University of Queensland Press, 1988, pp.40–41.

1: bakelite] The Belgian-born inventor Leo Hendrik Baekeland (1863–1944) invented Bakelite in Brooklyn NY in 1907 as a synthetic substitute for the shellac used in electronic insulation. Bakelite was made by mixing formaldehyde and carbolic acid, and is considered the first plastic.

Appears–in: New American Writing no. 10, 1992; London Review of Books (date?); ; collected in Under Berlin: New Poems 1988, University of Queensland Press, 1988, p.47.

11: post blotto triste] The Latin motto ‘post coitum omne animal triste’ means ‘after sexual intercourse every animal is sad.’

Appears–in: Scripsi vol.3 no.1 April 1985, pp..179–181; collected in Under Berlin: New Poems 1988, University of Queensland Press, 1988, pp.48–50.

The poem is a stanza-by-stanza reply to Peter Porter’s poem ‘On This Day I Complete My Fortieth Year’.

49: Sydney Bitter] A type of beer that hadn’t existed until I invented it, now manufactured by the Hahn brewing company.

58: drudger’s barge] A dredger’s [sic] barge appears in Rimbaud’s poem ‘Memory’.

59: being ‘absolutely modern’ as my mentor taught] ‘one must be absolutely modern’ is a line — a paragraph, in fact — in the last section of Arthur Rimbaud’s farewell to literature, the prose poem ‘Une Saison en Enfer’, 1873: ‘Il faut être absolument moderne.’

Appears–in: Meanjin vol.42 no.3 Spring 1983, pp.328–329; London Review of Books (date?); Verse (UK); The Penguin Book of Modern Australian Poetry, Ed. Tranter, John, and Mead, Philip. Ringwood, Victoria : Penguin, 1991, pp.283–285, collected in Under Berlin: New Poems 1988, University of Queensland Press, 1988, pp.43–45.

Appears–in: Scripsi vol.4 no.1 July 1986, p.125; Outrider : A Journal of Multicultural Literature in Australia vol.5 no.1/2 1988, p.25; collected in Under Berlin: New Poems 1988, University of Queensland Press, 1988, p.67.

7: billy on the boil] Billy or billy can: Australian.; any container in which water may be carried and boiled over a campfire, usually a makeshift tin can, or any pot or kettle in which tea is boiled over a campfire. Perhaps from the Scots dialect ‘billy-pot’.

21: hetaerae] Hetaerae were courtesans, that is to say, sophisticated companions and prostitutes. In ancient Greek society, hetaerae were independent and sometimes influential women who were required to wear distinctive dresses and had to pay taxes. Composed mostly of ex-slaves and foreigners, these courtesans were renowned for their achievements in dance and music, as well as for their physical talents. There is evidence that, unlike most other women in Greek society at the time, hetaerae were educated. It is remarkable that hetaerae not only were the only females who would actively take part in the symposiums but also that their opinions and beliefs were respected by men. (Wikipedia)

The last stanza imitates the appearance of ancient texts, where some of the words are missing.

Appears–in: Scripsi vol.4 no.1 July 1986, p.126; Outrider : A Journal of Multicultural Literature in Australia, vol.5 no.1/2 1988, p.118; collected in Under Berlin: New Poems 1988, University of Queensland Press, 1988, p.68.

4: ligatures] The act of binding or tying up. ‘In writing and typography, a ligature occurs where two or more letterforms are written or printed as a unit.’ (Wikipedia) An example is the ligature “fi”.

Appears–in: Scripsi vol.4 no.1 July 1986, p.127; Outrider : A Journal of Multicultural Literature in Australia vol.5 no.1/2 1988, p.117; Works on Paper (Cambridge UK, 2002); collected in Under Berlin: New Poems 1988, University of Queensland Press, 1988, p.69.

Appears–in: Scripsi vol.4 no.1 July 1986, p.129; Outrider : A Journal of Multicultural Literature in Australia vol.5 no.1/2 1988, p.119; collected in Under Berlin: New Poems 1988, University of Queensland Press, 1988, p.71.

Some time after I had written this poem I realised that it revolved around the concept of pairs of similar things.

Appears–in: Scripsi vol.2 no.2–3 Spring 1983, p.160; Outrider : A Journal of Multicultural Literature in Australia, vol.6 no.1 June 1989, p.26; Contemporary Australian Poetry : An Anthology, Editor: John Leonard, Knoxfield, Victoria : Houghton Mifflin, 1990, pp.138–139; New American Writing no. 10, 1992; Web Del Sol at http: //www.webdelsol.com/; Eye Dialect: no. 4, at http: //www.contemporarypoetry.com/dialect/issuefour.htm, April 2001; collected in Under Berlin: New Poems 1988, University of Queensland Press, 1988, p.72.

The Newcastle Hotel in George Street Sydney near Circular Quay was a legendary watering hole for artists, journalist, accountants, lecturers, wharf labourers and students in those times; it closed in the early 1970s. The walls were covered with bad student paintings for sale. I met my wife-to-be in the front bar of The Newcastle in 1964.

…Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less,
Withdraws into its happiness :
The mind, that ocean where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find ;
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds, and other seas ;
Annihilating all that’s made
To a green thought in a green shade…
— Andrew Marvell, ‘The Garden’

Appears–in: Scripsi vol.4 no.1 July 1986, p.132; collected in Under Berlin: New Poems 1988, University of Queensland Press, 1988, p.76.

Appears–in: Scripsi vol.4 no.1 July 1986, p.135; collected in Under Berlin: New Poems 1988, University of Queensland Press, 1988, p.79.

6: Woop Woop] the made-up name of a mythical town in Outback Australia, characteristics: remote, rustic, old-fashioned, out of touch, absurdly rural.

Appears–in: The Age (Melbourne) 5 July 1986, p.11; Hermes (University of Sydney, 1986); Poetry Australia no.107–108, 1986, p.62 (doubtful); as (alternative title for translation) ‘Berceuse’, first line: Je ne suis pas jaloux de vos jeunes loups domestiques –; language: English and French, in Echange Sud (Poetry Australia), Editor: Christine Michel, Marseilles, France: Sud, 1989, pp.190–191; The Indigo Book of Modern Australian Sonnets, Editor: Geoff Page, ACT, Ginninderra Press, 2003, p.38; collected in Under Berlin: New Poems 1988, University of Queensland Press, 1988, p.81.

3: fuck-truck] A ranch wagon, station wagon or van fitted out with a mattress. For its emergence through Australian slang into poetry, see Professor Gerald Wilkes, Dictionary of Australian Colloquialisms, 1985 or later edition, which quotes this poem.

15: Serepax] One brand-name of the anti-anxiety agent Oxazepam, or 7-chloro-1,3-dihydro-3-hydroxy-5-phenyl-2H-1,4-benzodiazepine-2-one, belonging to the benzodiazepine group which includes Valium, usually tinted pink.

Appears–in: Meanjin vol.41 no.3 Spring 1982, p.395; London Review of Books (date?); collected in Under Berlin: New Poems 1988, University of Queensland Press, 1988, p.84.

Title: La Pulqueria] A pulqueria is a Mexican bar selling pulque, a crude milky brew derived from the juice or sap of the agave, a member of the aloe family. When distilled, pulque makes a colourless liquor, mescal.

Appears–in: Scripsi vol.4 no.1 July 1986, p.142; collected in Under Berlin: New Poems 1988, University of Queensland Press, 1988, p.88.

This poem is one of four similar long narrative poems — epyllia, really — in the book The Floor of Heaven, published in 1992 and set on the NSW school syllabus for several years under the general topic of ‘gender relations’. The book was widely reviewed; at least two female reviewers objected to its supposed masculine tone, and one gave away the ending. You can read two reviews of it on this site: by Christopher Pollnitz: [»] and by Andrew Riemer: [»]. You can read an electronic version of the poem on this site: [»]. The printed version in Urban Myths has some minor editorial changes.

5: Florenzini’s] Among the dreary wowser wasteland of Sydney in the late 1950s and early 1960s there was one oasis of bohemian good cheer, cheap spaghetti and plentiful red wine: a coffee lounge in Elizabeth Street near Hunter Street called Lorenzini’s. It later moved to William Street near King’s Cross, and later (late 1960s, I think) closed. The Newcastle Hotel in George Street Sydney near Circular Quay was another gathering place for artists, journalists and others; it closed in the early 1970s and the Qantas building now occupies the site. A detailed description of it is given in chapter ten of Martin Johnston’s novel Cicada Gambit (Hale & Iremonger, GPO Box 2552, Sydney NSW 2001) where it is disguised as the Wessex Hotel. The walls were covered with bad student paintings for sale. These two places (plus a few others) are blended into Florenzini’s.

479: some insurance executive from New Haven] In 1916 the poet Wallace Stevens joined the home office of the Hartford Accident and Indemnity and left New York City to live in Hartford, where he would remain the rest of his life. By 1934, he had been named Vice President of his company. One of his poems is titled “An Ordinary Evening in New Haven” (1950).

692: The Harbour flows always to the East… ] the poem which Mr Lee recites is a loose (and indeed rather clumsy) translation of the first and last stanzas of ‘Meditation at Red Cliff’, by Su Shih, the Sung Dynasty Chinese poet and scholar of Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism whose literary name was Su Tung P’o, A.D. 1036–1101. A complete and more reliable version, translated by Yu Min-chuan, can be found in the anthology The White Pony, ed. Robert Payne, Mentor (The New American Library of World Literature), New York, 1960, page 266.

Appears–in: The Age Monthly Review (Melbourne) vol.9 no.8 November 1989, pp.6–8, 20–22; collected in The Floor of Heaven, Angus and Robertson/ HarperCollins, Pymble, New South Wales, 1992, pp.67–90.

The poem is written in the form used by Francis Webb in his early poem ‘Towards the Land of the Composer.’

Appears–in: London Review of Books vol.14 no.12 25 June 1992, p.23; The Booksmith (bookstore) internet site in San Francisco, April 1997 at http: //www.booksmith.com/reader/tranter.html; The Best Australian Poems 2004, Editor: Les A. Murray, Melbourne, Victoria: Black Inc., 2004, pp.185–187.

Appears–in: Otis Rush no.6–7 May 1991; Verse Spring 1991, pp.24–25; collected in At The Florida, 1993, pp.40–41.

I was walking along Lygon Street, Carlton, in Melbourne, on Tuesday 16 January 1990, when John Forbes bowled up on a bicycle. “G’Day, Jack,” he said as he dismounted. “You know I nearly got knocked over a minute ago. It wasn’t the car driver’s fault, it was my fault, really. It must the be extra oxygen or something, but you get quite high riding along on a bike. You feel like God, that nothing can happen to you. Wait a minute — God on a Bicycle — a great title for my autobiography!” … This with a mischievous grin. “No it’s not, mate,” I said. “It’s the title of a poem I’m going home to write later today.” And so I did. Not long after the poem first appeared in print, I heard that John had fallen off his bike in Melbourne, while carrying a vacuum cleaner strapped to his back. He injured his arm badly. When he next saw me he said “Don’t write any more bloody poems like that one, mate; it’ll be the death of me.”

1: a cloud / shaped like a camel, then a weasel] Hamlet, 3.2.392–99: Hamlet: Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel? / Polonius: By th’ mass, and ‘tis like a camel indeed. / Hamlet: Methinks it is like a weasel. / Polonius: It is back’d like a weasel. / Hamlet: Or like a whale. / Polonius: Very like a whale.

Appears–in: The Sydney Morning Herald 25 January 1992, p.44; Jacket no.3 April 1998; The Times Literary Supplement, 1996; collected in At The Florida, 1993, p.13; Homage to John Forbes, Editor: Ken Bolton, Brandl and Schlesinger, 2002, p.39.

Appears–in: Paris Review 1991; collected in At The Florida, 1993, pp.30–35.

The Cretan princess Ariadne fell in love with the Athenian hero Theseus, and helped him escape the labyrinth after he’d killed the Minotaur. They eloped together, but Theseus abandoned Ariadne on the island of Naxos. Dionysus, the god of wine, found her, and when he married her she became immortal. She is unlikely to have visited the Aegean island of Lesbos, home of the poet Sappho. This poem is written in an English accentual-syllabic adaptation of the Sapphic metre, and is the only poem I have written entirely in Sapphics. Here is an epigrammatic illustration of the form:

‘water-clock droplets] The Greeks used the ‘clepsydra’, a clock rather like an hour-glass, that told time by the passing of water through a small hole.

Appears–in: Parnassus (New York), 1993; collected in At The Florida, 1993, pp.8–10.

The poem is not a translation, and it is only loosely in the style of the Alexandrian poet Constantine Cavafy who was born on 29 April 1863 and died on the same date in 1933 in Alexandria (Egypt). The 29th of April happens to be my own birthday. The lamp called ‘Raymonde’, however, is actual, and belonged to Ormond College in Melbourne where I wrote the poem.

Appears–in: The Times Literary Supplement 24–30 August 1990, p.887; The Canberra Times 25 April 1992 (C8); collected in Pamphlet Poets [Series] : Series 2, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory : National Library of Australia, 1992, pp.16–17; collected in At The Florida, 1993.

Appears–in: The Canberra Times 8 May 1993, C9; collected in At The Florida, 1993, p.5.

25: Paddock, sir, the witch’s cat.] There seems to be a misreading of Macbeth Act I Scene 1 here. ‘Graymalkin’ is the witches’ familiar spirit in the form of a cat, and ‘paddock’ is an archaic English word for toad:

39: Appaloosa] A short, sturdy horse usually with a spotted or mottled coat, brought to the Americas by the Spanish (or perhaps by Russian fur traders) and associated with the Nez Percé Pueblo Indian tribe from about 1700 A.D.

52: Jack invented the calculus] Another misreading: the Scottish mathematician John Napier in fact invented logarithms, not the calculus.

Appears–in: The Age Monthly Review October 1988, p.5; Nimrod : International Journal of Prose and Poetry vol.36 no.2 Spring/Summer 1993, pp.38–40; Australian Poetry in the Twentieth Century, Editors: Robert Gray and Geoffrey Lehmann, Heinemann, 1991, pp.363–366; collected in At The Florida, 1993, pp.15–17.

This poem came to me while visiting my dentist, Dr Grahame Caisley, whose surgery at that time overlooked Sydney’s Hyde Park. Ibises had recently begun to descend on Sydney’s parks from their usual haunts in the country, and a sub-text of the poem is the connection between librarians, ibises and the ancient city of Alexandria. The poet and librarian Callimachus (c.305–c.240 B.C.) is supposed to have qua

John Tranter: Notes to poems

Friedrich Hölderlin

Da ich ein Knabe war...

‘When I was a boy’

Arthur Rimbaud

Les réparties de Nina (Nina’s Replies)

Writing in the Manner of Sappho