The Poetic Eye: Occasional Writings 1982–2012: Michael Sharkey

Copyright

Table of Contents

Editor’s Preface

Introduction

PART 1 (1979–90)

Romantic Hangover in Australian Poetry?

Out of Time

New Zealand City Streets and Gipsies on the Road

Interview with Alan Wearne

Pulling in a Trojan Horse

The Politics of Poetry

Beyond the Jindyworobaks

Storming the Teacups (Again)

Fading Shadows

Clear, Timeless Opus

Minority Groups Like the Living

Imperial Nigrescences

The Persistence of Mallarmé

Starting from Ulverstone

The Myth of the New and Others

Interview with Geoff Goodfellow

Something to Contribute: A Conversation

Cold Turkey in the Cantina

Poetry: The Melbourne Alternative

Old Tricks Transformed

First Thoughts on Everyday Rhetoric

An Interview with Eric Beach

VIP and Business-Class Poetry

The Great Singer, Icon, and Enigma

A Caution to Reviewers

The Australian Fascisti

The Jokes Just Get Verse and Verse

An Interview with Shelton Lea

Poetical Atlas of Political Diversity

Passionate Complexity Among the Loco-Poetic

Diverse Flights, Ethereal and Grounded

You’re Imagining It

PART 2 (1990–2003)

Stepping Back: A Word of (Auto)Biography

Zora Cross’s Entry into Australian Literature

From Duty to Tribute

The Poetry of Gwen Harwood

David McKee Wright, Maorilander

Mudrooroo Narogin and William Hart–Smith

The Province of Every Person

Cheer Up and Take It Lightly

McCuaig Made Poetry Talk

A Salom Course

Ern Burial

Black Stump or Burning Bush?

This is Not a Review

Celebrating the Poetry of the Ballad

Voyaging Through Depths and Shallows

In Celebration of Gwen Harwood

Harris’s Pavane

Compassionate Intensity

Goodfellow’s Semaphore and Other Messages

L’Chaim to Life

Far Away From How it Looks at Home

Dransfield Among the Biographers

New Music

Reviewing Now

Parody and Co.

Defending the Line of Wit

More About Wit

Poetic Voice

The Ventriloquial Muse

How Poetry Lines Up

PART 3 (2004–2012)

The Question in Poetry

Poetry and the Human Comedy

The Poetry of Lauren Williams

Byron’s ‘Deluge’

John Tranter’s “Australia Day”

How Poets Work: A Personal Note (Because I Was Asked)

How Do Poems Sound?

“But Who Considers Woman Day by Day?”

Starting from Melbourne

A Touchstone in Auckland

After Jerusalem

Subtle Conversation

Page’s Primer

Moving and Memorable

Inhabiting a Poem

Trans-Tasman Literary Relations

The Rapture Endures

PART 4 (THE PHOTOGRAPH AS POEM)

“Something of Value”: An Introduction to John Fields’ ‘Signature’ Photographs

Onomastic Index