Collected Poems: (Salt Modern Poets)

This book collects all the poems published by Andrew Taylor since his first book appeared in 1971, together with a substantial section of new work, and confirms him as one of Australia's most original and individual poets. The poems range through explorations of personal and family relationships, encounters with a wide variety of landscapes and cultures, and social and political issues. A strong sense of mortality is balanced by a delight in the details of the physical world, a fascination with everyday objects, and a belief in the regenerative power of love. Poems for children and aging or dying parents explore the hopes and possibilities of the future for the young, and the significance of a lived life for the old and those who survive them. This poetry is firmly located in the physical world, often in specific landscapes and places, ranging from the coastlines of southern and western Australia to numerous places in Europe and the USA where the poet has lived. Although many of the poems are short and meditative-lyrical, there are also several extended sequences, including one of book length written during the absence abroad of the poet's wife. Other sequences explore this relatio

Table of Contents:
The Cool change (1971) Ice Fishing (1973) The Invention of Fire (1976) The Cat’s Chine and Ears: A Bestiary (1976) Parabolas: Prose Poems (1976) The Crystal Absences, the Trout (1978) New Poems 1975-1980 Travelling (1986) Folds in the Map (1991) Sandstone (1995) Götterdämmerung Café (2001) New Poems 2000–2003

About the Author :
Andrew Taylor was born in Australia in 1940. He is the author of more than fifteen books of poetry, the libretti of two operas, and translations from German and Italian. His poetry has won several prizes, and reflects his extensive travel. He has taught at universities in Australia, Germany and China, and lived in the UK, USA, Italy and Germany. His most recent publications are Collected poems (2004) and The unhaunting (2009), both from Salt Publishing.

Review :
[The Collected Poems] is a book that will live with me for months and years to come. Every time I open it to read, I find new pleasures. Taylor is a quiet poet, fastidious and precise, but this does not preclude a very wide tonal range and the deployment of a keen intelligence and wit in poetry that dazzles with its formal variety. The breadth of subject-matter is astonishing ...Taylor is a distinctively Australian poet, yet he effortlessly encompasses the wider world. He is at home in Europe and America, and is a sensitive explorer of those cultures in relation to Australia ... It is, of course, impossible to illustrate the richness of this book via a single poem. Suffice it to say that here is a massive contribution to the cultural hoard. Taylor’s poems ... show a cool intelligence that is modest, tolerant: caught in moments of utterance, searching for and playing with significance and attuned to their own provisionality. The `voice’ is speculative, emotional, formally inventive, both international and regional.