Cirrus@Austlit

'In his analysis of Judith Beveridge's poetry, Mike Heald contrasts poetic and philosophical engagements with Buddhism, arguing that "the imagination produces a conception of transcendence very different from that found in the meditative tradition," with the effect that in Beveridge's Siddhattha, the reader encounters "a figure who bodies forth the ineluctable suffering of the human condition, and thus the perennial elusiveness and implausibility of transcendence, rather than one who embodies the promise and indeed successful realisation of transcendence." This appears to be an occasion in which affect-driven literature diverges substantially from philosophical myth narratives, albeit in a complementary rather than a mutually exclusive manner.' (Source: Introduction p. 4)