A strange magic

Abstract

A strange magic Kendalyn Mckisick Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry Cassandra Atherton and Paul Hetherington, eds. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2020. 186 pp. ISBN- 978-0-522-87474-7 A book that has been long awaited, Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry, provides an overview of how prose poetry has come into the Australian poetic landscape while presenting a variety of prose poems written by Australian poets who are breaking away from conservative, traditional poetic forms. These poets stand next to one another here—as a sort of resistance—unified by a shared belief that prose can and should be an acceptable entry for poetics. The featured poems are varied in content while also providing examples of how a prose poem might approach taking up space on the page. Each block of text uncovers a unique truth: "Until now, and despite the excellence of prose poetry in Australia, there has never been such an anthology, although poets since 2002 … have called for one to be published, … the result of relative neglect of prose poetry by critics and editors in Australia" (1). The anthology opens with a fourteen-page essay of exposition from the editors that seeks to explain the why of the book and bring readers to a level ground of understanding before experiencing the delight to come. The essay, "A Strange Magic: Australian Prose Poetry," is broken into five sections, wherein the reader learns about the history of the prose poem, how it has evolved in Australia as well as other areas of the world, how select academics view the form, what some of the broader characteristics of the prose poem are, and how prose poetry is being defined in regard to the poems that have been selected. Because the concept of a prose poem is not entirely concrete and not fully derived from traditional lineated poetry, the definition section of the essay is helpful to give a firm foundation to the collection of poems that follow. The featured prose poems are extremely different from one another, cobbling together a clearer, larger view of what Australian prose poetry looks and sounds like, while simultaneously breaking open possibilities of topics that the prose poems might broach. As an American poet who primarily reads poetry by American poets, I find these poems to be quite different from the prose poetry with which I am familiar—prose poems that are primarily narrative and linear but also have an apparent freedom to blend prose and poetic form, using punctuation creatively in place of line breaks, [End Page 398] while even at times blending in concepts of visual art. The poems featured within the anthology show a spectrum of approaches to blocks of texts, including lists, written vernacular, font as decoration, heavy fragmentation, justified and nonjustified text, and indented paragraphs. Two poems within the book that represent the variety of the anthology are "Wha'd I Tell Ya?" by Raelee Lancaster (115) and "Pen-Sickness" by Vincent Buckley (42). Lancaster's poem tells a story of a child who has been taught by their Auntie to weave baskets but does not remember how to start the basket. The response of the Auntie is "Wha'd I tell ya?" to each action of the child, from not remembering to successfully finishing the basket, showing how the same words can take on different meanings in different contexts. The speaker of the poem is a child, portrayed primarily through use of simple language. Though the language is childlike, the actions and repetition of the title create a poetic pattern. "Pen-Sickness" is a poem that uses more traditional poetic language yet uses the prose form. The unknown speaker pulls the reader in, using the address "you," and describes the sometimes painful process of writing a poem, using language that would also describe a person who is lovesick, drawing a parallel between romantic relationships and the relationships between a poet (the pen) and the poem. Instead of setting a narrative scene, the poem lingers in the mind through symbolism. This book certainly contributes to a greater understanding of prose poetry, both the politics and the form, as well as offering a progressive vision of prose poetry entering the world...