Cirrus@Austlit

'The Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry is the first major collection of its type in Australian letters1, as highlighted in the erudite and informative introduction. Editors Cassandra Atherton and Paul Hetherington are the co-authors of an academic study of the prose poem, so the reader is in good hands. Part of the sport of reviewing a significant and generational anthology such as this is to interrogate the biases of the editors and dwell upon who gets a guernsey. When it comes to prose poetry, however, the territory feels less emotionally charged. One can never be sure who’s playing in the muddy field between prose and poetry. In terms of the difficult task of defining the ‘prose poem’ the introduction provides some loose parameters: a prose poem is short and pithy, preferably half a page in length and not exceeding one page. Attention is also given to the justification of the right margin, which it is observed gives the impression of the text being fenced visually (as though the primary purpose of the Australian prose poem might be to keep the sheep in). Ultimately the editors resort to prose poetry to define the prose poem; according to James Harms they ‘feel horizontal in their rhetorical designs, like waves rushing up the beach, slowly flattening out into foam and a thin sheet of water, then receding back to the depths’ (14). This is as good a definition as any and the reader can proceed safe in the knowledge we’ll know one when we see one.'