'According to the late Charles Simic, ‘The prose poem is the result of two contradictory impulses, prose and poetry, and therefore cannot exist, but it does’. Simic was perhaps gesturing towards a tradition of prose poetry where other contradictions also come to the fore: the kind of contradictions that arise, for example, when we try to tease apart or combine dream and reality, fiction and nonfiction, self and other, beauty and horror, reason and the irrational.' (Introduction)
(Introduction)
'Two sentences in Carlo Rovelli’s most recent book White Holes came to mind when reading Stephen Edgar’s new and highly impressive Ghosts of Paradise. The first is something that perhaps one wouldn’t expect from a theoretical physicist: ‘time is not a map of reality: it is a kind of memory storage device…’ And the second is something equally unexpected from someone who, like Rovelli, has published numerous books: ‘…the real purpose of language is not to communicate. It is to get close to things, to be in relation with them.’' (Introduction)
'Phyllis Perlstone’s most recent poetry collection, But Now, celebrates the trajectory of a life. The preface alerts us to the scenario we are about to enter, from the time of the second world war, through the Great Depression, to a life-style in modern-day Barangaroo. Perlstone’s forte is meticulous description, metaphors built from the surrounding environment, each moment expanded to its limits.' (Introduction)
