'There are many fine poets in our city, engaged with the raw fire and the vibrancy and the whirling circus of the word that is Melbourne. Loud ones, effusive ones, praisers, complainers,
the whisperers, the shy. Polished ones, and those just beginning; made for the page and/or the stage, it’s the great parade!
And then, in their own separate skies, there’s Anastasi and Coburn. I have known their poetry individually for some time, but in this collection I am rather astounded at the breadth, the clarity, the precision, and above all the surety of this work. Both poets possess an inherent quiet wisdom combined with a rarity of skill and poise in their writing that is quite unusual for any poet, let alone relatively young writers at this stage in their careers.
'Eaglemont Press is proud to have The Silences in its quiver, and Eaglemont’s king Shelton Lea will be delighted with this venture and is toasting Anastasi and Coburn from wherever he currently reigns. At any rate, they can tell it better than I so stop reading this. Read these two.. Shhh. Get silent. (Ian McBryde, Publication Summary)
'The Silences, a two hander from Amanda Anastasi and Robbie Coburn, is one of the hits of the year for me. Although slender, coming in at just 41 pages, the poems have a power and coherence that has resulted from keeping their remit tightly focussed. Instead of a dos-si-dos format where each of the poets have a designated space within the book and their own ‘front’ cover, the poems in The Silences are interleaved as a conversation between the poets. The order, sometimes a single poem from one author followed by a set of poems from the other, is a well-structured scheme that has obviously been dictated by the flow of the poems rather than an artificially introduced this-then-that/ you-then-me idea.' (Introduction)
'The Silences, a two hander from Amanda Anastasi and Robbie Coburn, is one of the hits of the year for me. Although slender, coming in at just 41 pages, the poems have a power and coherence that has resulted from keeping their remit tightly focussed. Instead of a dos-si-dos format where each of the poets have a designated space within the book and their own ‘front’ cover, the poems in The Silences are interleaved as a conversation between the poets. The order, sometimes a single poem from one author followed by a set of poems from the other, is a well-structured scheme that has obviously been dictated by the flow of the poems rather than an artificially introduced this-then-that/ you-then-me idea.' (Introduction)
