'In I Love Poetry, Michael Farrell continues his affirmation of poetry as a mode for thinking: about Australia, land, and settlement, about planetary life, and about poetry’s relation to other art forms and to other kinds of writing. His poems show an aptitude for both fiction and (auto)biography. Playful and subtle in tone, they get under the skin of your mind more than in its face. ‘AC/DC as First Emu Prime Minister’ and ‘Into a Bar’ remobilise familiar Australian icons, while ‘Cate Blanchett and the Difficult Poem’ creates a scenario with the actor and Waleed Aly where reading and composition become a single act. ‘Great Poet Snowdome’ is a pervy story of kitsch involving Sydney and the pope, a recurring figure in the book who re-emerges as Pope Pinocchio. There’s a Tame Impala acrostic, a Mad Max riff (‘Put Your Helmet On’), a One Direction revision (‘Drag Me Down’), and forays into poeticising lyrebirds, kangaroos, Robert Menzies and Elizabeth Bishop. There is Sid Vicious and there are lamingtons. There is everything that loves poetry: Weet-Bix, Iron Maiden t-shirts, motorbikes, and you.' (Publication summary)
'I snap a picture of a poem and send it to a friend. I send it because this friend says he is newly interested in poetry. I send it because this is a poem that intrigues me.' (Introduction)
'Where Robert Frost might write a few lines soundly cut from the solid old tree of language and delivered in his mellifluous White Mountain voice...' (Introduction)
'Where Robert Frost might write a few lines soundly cut from the solid old tree of language and delivered in his mellifluous White Mountain voice...' (Introduction)
'I snap a picture of a poem and send it to a friend. I send it because this friend says he is newly interested in poetry. I send it because this is a poem that intrigues me.' (Introduction)
