I Con: New and Selected Poems(Salt Modern Poets)

I Con: New and Selected Poems represents the best examples of poetry from the career of Tim Thorne, a career spanning over forty years and a dozen collections. It contains something for every area of interest, from delicate love lyrics to witty and sardonic comments on political matters. Arranged in roughly chronological order, the book traces the development of this remarkable poet from the early pieces such as “Star” and “Launceston” with their often raw and violent imagery through to his recent A Letter to Egon Kisch, a major contribution to the epistolary poetic canon in the tradition of Byron and Auden. It also contains a selection of the dramatic monologues from his highly acclaimed The Streets Aren’t For Dreamers and a number of the pieces based on Australian history and on Australian paintings written in the 1990s. Among the previously unpublished works included here is his series “Trainstations from European Poets”, deliberate mistranslations of well-known anthology pieces, which are not just fun, but contain new insights into old favourites. Deeply personal poems about the death of his mother, about the father he never knew, about his baby daughter and about a friend dying of a heroin overdose avoid sentimentality and forge tough art out of delicate subjects. They sit at perfect ease alongside meditations on Antarctic exploration, on the meeting of Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie or on the Iraq War. I Con does what its title suggests, but you’ll be glad it does.

Table of Contents:
Proem: Emoh Ruo Poems 1968 – 1973 Star Hustler High Country Sideflower Voyage of the Eye Whatever Happened to Conway Twitty? Launceston Highway Somewhere Between Waxahachie and Woonsocket Advice to a Popular Hero Man and Law Sydney’s Drowning Western Addition California Elegy for Jenny Aubade Autumn Poems 1974 – 1979 Grammar Jet Lag Squad Roulette Five Trees Clare Bag of Shit 80° 08’ 1934 Polheim The Worst Journey in the World Onyx River Mawson Alone Growth Melody for a Hard Summer Underground Vanzetti Blade Bolt Song for Seychelles from The Atlas (1982) I II III V Interlude (The boy …) VII(By the Greystone bed …) XVI Poems 1980 – 1989 Left Fluid Low Tide, North Esk Brady’s Lookout Macquarie House Reds Bane Tight To Ashes On/Against the Wall Launching, By George Petty Sessions Songs of the Protest Era from The Streets Aren’t for Dreamers (1995) The Cull Rat’s Song Stage Dive Roadkill Advice Words for K Bouncer Escort Busking Arriving in Devonport Bear from Taking Queen Victoria to Inveresk (1997) Comrade Revenant The Last Muster of the Aborigines at Risdon Low Tide Fruit and Flowers Sunday in the Gardens Naming the Sensation No 2 Sydney Cove Bound to Please Led Poems 1990 – 1999 Leipzig To Adrian Paunescu Crash The Living are Left with Imagined Lives Cold War When the Saints Go Marching Out Love Poem for Stephanie Don Gibson and Etymology Erechtheus 33’s Apologia Poem for Port Arthur Aerodynamics Speaking for Myself The Aisles Brontë Country Mother and Son For My Father Keeping the Dream Alive from aUStralia (2004) Oosutoraria Vinegar Hill Pinchgut Spider Dance and Horse Whip Mandarin of the Crystal Button Coningham v Coningham Black Cat and Wooden Shoe Lockout The Mayor Tanah Merah Advent 21/12/1967 Sight Screen Poems 2000 – 2006 Et in Acadia Ego? Dry Zig-Zag Track Scapeland Writing the World Meditation on Parliament House, Canberra 2002 Elegance Chemically Sharpened Mesopotamian Suite South-Western Baptist Meditations on Ms Westbury’s Precepts Celebritocracy Dentist’s Waiting Room Red Label There are No Kangaroos in Austria Elegy for Sandra Dee Dolphins off Sikinos The Death of Reason Roncesvalles: Men at Work from Trainstations from European Poets The Bawd, the Lair and Albert Ross Do We Know Elly Gee? An Evening in the Trakl Night Club Stone No 5: Osip and the Minor Celebrity from Letter to Egon Kisch excerpt from Section II excerpt from Section VIII

About the Author :
Tim Thorne has written twelve collections of poetry, has edited four anthologies and his poems have appeared in most major Australian literary journals. He established the Tasmanian Poetry Festival and was its Director for 17 years. He has performed his work throughout Australia and overseas, and has worked as a poet in a variety of community contexts. He lives in Launceston, Tasmania, with his wife Stephanie and a large garden.

Review :
A searing portrayal that fuses the rules of grammar with the language of war. -- Anthony Lynch Australian Book Review, February 2009