'Petra White's poetry is distinctive for its sharp and unusual imagery, its authoritative expressions of the inner life and its existential preparedness and irony. Mythic imagination and narrative are at the heart of this book, her fourth collection. The ancient Book of Ezekiel is the unlikely source for a compact epic, "How the Temple was Built". Playful in its invention, this poem is terrifying and poignant. The Bible account is reinvented through a secular lens, touching on familiar concerns: war, displacement and feminism. The old epic tropes - love, death, faith, despair - drive this story. White's myth-making here explores the limits of being human and the limits of being a god. The second section, "Landscapes" is thirteen sketches of human solitariness, featuring ancient mythic figures and anonymous modern ones. Unobtrusively presented landscapes, at times hyper-real, or shading to dream, interpolate the characters. These incursions into psyche are fluid and metamorphic. Each singular poem crackles with impulse, marking iconic stillness and strange beauty. Reading for a Quiet Morning, which also includes several spirited versions of Rilke, is Petra White's most daring collection to date.' (Publication Summary)
'Part unauthorized biography, part Miltonic character study, and part examination of what it is that makes us hominids of the sapiens order tick, the first section of Petra White's new collection, Reading for a Quiet Morning, casts an oracular, topological gaze across a place of outposts imagining themselves toward stabilities. In "How the Temple Was Built," the poet imagines a milieu of flat domains propped up by "handmade gods / vivid as puppets held up to the burning sun" (4) and acutely understands metaphysics as an ur-discourse straightening mayhem into particular directions...' (Introduction)
'Approaching new work from such sharp, prolific and often dazzling poets as Magdalena Ball and Petra White is arguably no job for a quiet morning. Both White’s Reading for a Quiet Morning and Ball’s Unmaking Atoms demand (and duly reward) close attention. The perusal of such multi-layered, expansive texts is more suited, perhaps, to the intensity of early evenings, the drawn-out moments of twilight. For there is strident and persistent music erupting from both of these collections; sometimes it might seem serene, but more often the tune that floods out of the text feels more like an intense, liturgical dirge.' (Introduction)
'Since the late 1980s, the work of John Kinsella has been protean and prodigious. At times a pastoral poet (some say anti-pastoral), such as with The Silo (1995), at others an experimental one. as in Syzgy (1993), Kinsella is best known these days as an eco-poet, a term to which his work has given an almost definitional focus.' (Introduction)
'Since the late 1980s, the work of John Kinsella has been protean and prodigious. At times a pastoral poet (some say anti-pastoral), such as with The Silo (1995), at others an experimental one. as in Syzgy (1993), Kinsella is best known these days as an eco-poet, a term to which his work has given an almost definitional focus.' (Introduction)
'Part unauthorized biography, part Miltonic character study, and part examination of what it is that makes us hominids of the sapiens order tick, the first section of Petra White's new collection, Reading for a Quiet Morning, casts an oracular, topological gaze across a place of outposts imagining themselves toward stabilities. In "How the Temple Was Built," the poet imagines a milieu of flat domains propped up by "handmade gods / vivid as puppets held up to the burning sun" (4) and acutely understands metaphysics as an ur-discourse straightening mayhem into particular directions...' (Introduction)
'Approaching new work from such sharp, prolific and often dazzling poets as Magdalena Ball and Petra White is arguably no job for a quiet morning. Both White’s Reading for a Quiet Morning and Ball’s Unmaking Atoms demand (and duly reward) close attention. The perusal of such multi-layered, expansive texts is more suited, perhaps, to the intensity of early evenings, the drawn-out moments of twilight. For there is strident and persistent music erupting from both of these collections; sometimes it might seem serene, but more often the tune that floods out of the text feels more like an intense, liturgical dirge.' (Introduction)
