Prickly Moses - (Princeton Contemporary Poets) by Simon West (Hardcover)

About the Book

"For the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets, a new collection by Australian poet Simon West that explores childhood experience and Australian ecology and topography. In this collection, named after the Australian term for the mimosa tree, Simon West explores the powers of acknowledgement and naming, of turning perception to word. The book begins with several poems focused upon the experience of learning to read and write in childhood before expanding outward to explore the topography, landscape, botany, and zoology of Melbourne and the larger domain of Victoria. He also draws upon his extensive knowledge of modernist Italian poetry, placing the world of Australia in dialogue with the landscapes and experiences of antiquity. Across the collection, these poems are united by their close attention to sound both on the page and in the world. They offer a meditation on the dual work of the poet: to observe and scrutinize, to plumb for the right sound or syllable, to translate, as West does, the flight of the colorful Australian parrots called rosellas onto the page"--

Book Synopsis

Compelling poems that celebrate language as it encounters the nameless variety of the natural world, from Australia to Italy

An uncanny blend of the external and the intimate has been a hallmark of Simon West's poetry for nearly twenty years. In this new collection, the Australian poet and Italianist delights in the transforming and endlessly varied powers of naming and speaking. West's intensely regional focus stands in dialogue with Europe and antiquity. Landscapes reveal the tangle of their historical dimensions, as the rivers of both the Goulburn Valley in southeastern Australia and the Po Valley in northern Italy merge and flow into the wider currents of the Southern Ocean. Again and again, language and the senses throw themselves into the nameless riot of the world, from eucalypts and clouds to a medieval bell tower and the sounds a pencil makes as it crosses a page.

Review Quotes

"It is a handsome book in a distinguished series."---Martin Duwell, Australian Poetry Review

"West finds inspiration for his gorgeously detailed poems in the figures and likenesses of nature: a eucalyptus twists 'like wrist joints in an artist's portfolio, ' new growth catches 'the light like a crowd / of scimitars in the breeze.' The Australian poet's formally engaged, often rhyming verse--sonnets, couplets--reveals a mind nurtured in a Mediterranean climate of classicism."---David Woo, Literary Hub

About the Author

Simon West is the author of four previous collections of poetry, including Carol and Ahoy and The Ladder, which was shortlisted for the Australian Prime Minister's Literary Awards. He is also the author of Dear Muses? Essays in Poetry and the editor and translator of The Selected Poetry of Guido Cavalcanti. He lives in Melbourne, Australia.