Pub Date : 2023-09-08DOI: 10.1353/apo.2022.a906060
Derek Hinckley
2022 ❖ 161 stanza, as one long sentence, readers may find that meaning eludes them because of the wordy expression. In “Concerning Shearers Playing for the Bride” from the Localities section, the first page of the poem feels mostly cohesive (except for some fairly random rhyming in the fifth stanza). The poem concerns a painting by Arthur Boyd, and this first page does well in bringing it to life for the reader. However, the strength of the opening fades in the second and third page of the poem, when both the tone and the subject shift. We move from lovely lines like “the bride behind and the costly veil / while the lantern flutters, yaws and bends” to “And the cards say / and the mat says / ‘Play!’ Play / craftily for the essences’ / sweet emergence / from cocoon of circumstance.” This drastic shift in both tone and content not only disconcerts readers but also strips polish from the finished poem. He moves from capturing the essence of the painting to a less measured, more stream-of-consciousness rant reminiscent of a paler version of Allen Ginsberg. This is disappointing because when Harris pays attention to language, he has a real ability to draw a reader in and make a statement with his work. Harris is at his strongest in his most descriptive poems, when he uses clear, carefully chosen language. For example, in “Cane Country,” appearing in The Abandoned, he writes, “Work was a god whose feet / were sugar and fire.” In moments like this, Harris shows us his skill at molding language to his purposes. The sections have punch and life and lack the heaviness of his more verbose poems. He lights up the reader’s imagination. There are enough moments of spark in Harris’s work that it would be well worth a reader’s time to sit down with a full collection in which the poet had the space to tell a story, to create a narrative arc. Unfortunately, the selection here, unbalanced as it is in representing his full collections, does not make for a good introduction to Robert Harris’s poetic accomplishments.
{"title":"The Living Sea of Waking Dreams by Richard Flanagan (review)","authors":"Derek Hinckley","doi":"10.1353/apo.2022.a906060","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/apo.2022.a906060","url":null,"abstract":"2022 ❖ 161 stanza, as one long sentence, readers may find that meaning eludes them because of the wordy expression. In “Concerning Shearers Playing for the Bride” from the Localities section, the first page of the poem feels mostly cohesive (except for some fairly random rhyming in the fifth stanza). The poem concerns a painting by Arthur Boyd, and this first page does well in bringing it to life for the reader. However, the strength of the opening fades in the second and third page of the poem, when both the tone and the subject shift. We move from lovely lines like “the bride behind and the costly veil / while the lantern flutters, yaws and bends” to “And the cards say / and the mat says / ‘Play!’ Play / craftily for the essences’ / sweet emergence / from cocoon of circumstance.” This drastic shift in both tone and content not only disconcerts readers but also strips polish from the finished poem. He moves from capturing the essence of the painting to a less measured, more stream-of-consciousness rant reminiscent of a paler version of Allen Ginsberg. This is disappointing because when Harris pays attention to language, he has a real ability to draw a reader in and make a statement with his work. Harris is at his strongest in his most descriptive poems, when he uses clear, carefully chosen language. For example, in “Cane Country,” appearing in The Abandoned, he writes, “Work was a god whose feet / were sugar and fire.” In moments like this, Harris shows us his skill at molding language to his purposes. The sections have punch and life and lack the heaviness of his more verbose poems. He lights up the reader’s imagination. There are enough moments of spark in Harris’s work that it would be well worth a reader’s time to sit down with a full collection in which the poet had the space to tell a story, to create a narrative arc. Unfortunately, the selection here, unbalanced as it is in representing his full collections, does not make for a good introduction to Robert Harris’s poetic accomplishments.","PeriodicalId":41595,"journal":{"name":"Antipodes-A Global Journal of Australian/New Zealand Literature","volume":"1 1","pages":"161 - 163"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83107112","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:Merciless Gods (2014) is Christos Tsiolkas's only collection of short stories and arguably his least discussed work to date. Comprising stories that Tsiolkas published in various literary magazines and anthologies as early as 1995, Merciless Gods is persistent in its fixation on the relationship between queer desire, identity, and disgust. Throughout the collection, characters are frequently exposed to the bodily discharges that most of us tend to dissociate from, cringe at, and conceal from one another: sweat, semen, odor, and excrement. Characters also blurt out vile homophobic and racist bigotry in impulsive overflows of speech that bring about release and disgust at the same time. In this article, we read the spasmic (in all its forms) as a liminal space of joy and repulsion that constitutes what we call Tsiolkas's politics of disgust. We argue that disgust is crucial to Tsiolkas's deeply humanist and densely historical project, best exemplified in Merciless Gods in the ways that form—short fiction and the collection—arouses distinct feelings in readers that they cannot escape and that Tsiolkas's work refuses to gloss over. In this way, Merciless Gods testifies to Tsiolkas's compulsive return to fundamental questions of justice and distribution of misery and well-being.
{"title":"The Politics of Disgust: Form and Feeling in Christos Tsiolkas's Merciless Gods","authors":"Keyvan Allahyari, Tyne Daile Sumner","doi":"10.1353/apo.2021.0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/apo.2021.0010","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Merciless Gods (2014) is Christos Tsiolkas's only collection of short stories and arguably his least discussed work to date. Comprising stories that Tsiolkas published in various literary magazines and anthologies as early as 1995, Merciless Gods is persistent in its fixation on the relationship between queer desire, identity, and disgust. Throughout the collection, characters are frequently exposed to the bodily discharges that most of us tend to dissociate from, cringe at, and conceal from one another: sweat, semen, odor, and excrement. Characters also blurt out vile homophobic and racist bigotry in impulsive overflows of speech that bring about release and disgust at the same time. In this article, we read the spasmic (in all its forms) as a liminal space of joy and repulsion that constitutes what we call Tsiolkas's politics of disgust. We argue that disgust is crucial to Tsiolkas's deeply humanist and densely historical project, best exemplified in Merciless Gods in the ways that form—short fiction and the collection—arouses distinct feelings in readers that they cannot escape and that Tsiolkas's work refuses to gloss over. In this way, Merciless Gods testifies to Tsiolkas's compulsive return to fundamental questions of justice and distribution of misery and well-being.","PeriodicalId":41595,"journal":{"name":"Antipodes-A Global Journal of Australian/New Zealand Literature","volume":"1 1","pages":"36 - 52"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73358395","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"To see an owl in the day, wisdom must come","authors":"A. Casey","doi":"10.1353/apo.2021.0044","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/apo.2021.0044","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41595,"journal":{"name":"Antipodes-A Global Journal of Australian/New Zealand Literature","volume":"1 1","pages":"262 - 263"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83648058","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"3.8 in Otautahi","authors":"Gregory Dally","doi":"10.1353/apo.2021.0016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/apo.2021.0016","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41595,"journal":{"name":"Antipodes-A Global Journal of Australian/New Zealand Literature","volume":"11 1","pages":"105 - 106"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81470104","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From Offices and Living Rooms around the World: AAALS 2021 Virtual Conference","authors":"Barbara M. Hoffmann, Ann-Marie Blanchard","doi":"10.1353/apo.2021.0048","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/apo.2021.0048","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41595,"journal":{"name":"Antipodes-A Global Journal of Australian/New Zealand Literature","volume":"60 1","pages":"288 - 290"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73787152","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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