Author(s): Stephen Edgar

Poetry

'Look, look,' exhorts the opening poem of this dazzling new collection. The discoveries of observation, both physical and intellectual, ravishing and harrowing, are recounted across a broad sweep of experience. Edgar returns habitually to the character of light. 'Exhibits of the Sun' moves from the ghostly Ferris wheel of Saturn's rings to the beach pavilion wrapped in ochre fog during Sydney's dust storm, from the glimpses of a lover's light-shaped body in the passage of the moon to a vision of a whole lifetime between one eye blink and the next. Presiding over all is Walter Benjamin's Angel of History, swept away into the future as he looks back on the unravelled pageant of humanity. 'On the short list of the best living practitioners of verse, rhymed or blank.' Joshua Mehigan, Poetry (Chicago). 'They said of his last book 'Eldershaw': a brilliant piece of 'uncanny' fiction, alive and convincing at every point, crackling with engagement and intensity.' Martin Duwell, 'Australian Poetry Review' '[A] wonderful love poem and elegy, [of] almost unbearable poignancy. The final dateless narrative, 'The Pool', is a high point of Australian poetry.'
Geoffrey Lehmann, 'The Weekend Australian'.