Attempts at Being

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Alison Croggon Attempts at Being
Search for a word or phrase in this book … Biographical note: Alison Croggon writes poetry, prose, criticism and texts for theatre. Her books of poetry include This is the Stone, (Penguin Books Australia), The Blue Gate (Black Pepper Press) and Mnemosyne (Wild Honey Press). Awards include the Anne Elder and Dame Mary Gilmore Prizes. Her theatre texts have been produced by companies across Australia. She was the 2000 Australia Council writer in residence at Cambridge University, UK, and edits the webzine Masthead. BIC Basic EAN13: 9781876857424 ISBN-10: 1876857420 ISBN-13: 9781876857424 Author: Alison Croggon Title: Attempts at Being Series: Salt Modern Poets Product class: BC Language: eng Audience: General/trade BIC subject category: CTCH1 Publisher: Salt Publishing Pub date: 01-Mar-02 Extent: 188pp Height: 216 mm Width: 140 mm Thickness: 11 mm Weight: 282 gms Supplier: Gardners Books Supplier: Ingram Book Group Supplier: Inbooks (James Bennett) Availability: IP Price: GBP 9.95 Price: USD 13.95 Rights: World	See larger image PAPERBACK 20% off at the UK Bookstore! ~~£9.95~~ £7.96 20% off at the US Bookstore! ~~$13.95~~ $11.16	Short description/annotation: Main description: Often shifting and allusive, Croggon’s poems can convey the ‘strangeness of dream’.… The ‘stubborn voice’ is restless, impatient, exploratory – attuned to bedrock reality. Her poems are often carried forward by sheer rhythmical energy and, if the nature of the anguish that often informs them can be hard to pin down, it’s because anguish is seen as the price of being alive.… She can slip in and out of styles as readily as an amphibian slips from land to water. Table of contents: Part One Child’s play Attempts at being They do not arrive in time Elegy Hands Illness Medea The Breach Part Three Elegy II Weather Breath steams across chilled fields Silence broke my mouth The wind Songs of grass Part Four A digression Monologues for an apocalypse Tracing the damage On lyric Beginning again Part Five Leaves Saint This window Lenz Part Seven Lamps Language Where are the dark woods? Mnemosyne Solo The Famine Part Nine Amplitudes Arthur Part Eleven Phrases Suttee Owl Songs View excerpt as PDF: Click here to view a sample (64 KB) Excerpt from book: Saint You became a dark earth on the back of a real sun, which blazed in credulous eyes. When you shot the lamb, its bleat festered like a splinter. At 3am the lights throbbed like veins on dark men who staggered out of clubs smelling of starvation. You knew them all, the shout, the fist, the eyes like stale urine. You went inside. A woman lay bound and gagged on a table. You took out your wounds and laid them beside her. She kept breathing, staring straight ahead. At last you remembered the sun, its whiteness, the clarity of steel. You left her there, familiar at last, and your hands smelt of sweet acid. It was dawn again. Review quote: Often shifting and allusive, her poems can convey the ‘strangeness of dream’.… The ‘stubborn voice’ is restless, impatient, exploratory – attuned to bedrock reality. Poems are often carried forward by sheer rhythmical energy and, if the nature of the anguish that often informs them can be hard to pin down, it’s because anguish is seen as the price of being alive.… She can slip in and out of styles as readily as an amphibian slips from land to water. Australian Book Review Review quote: This is a poetry of changes, dissolvings, transformations, fluidity between inside and out, between people and nature.… Other starting points are the poetic tradition and musical forms – the ways that art works, what it can articulate and fail to articulate, the inexpressible, white space and silences, unfaithful translations. New England Review Review quote: Alison Croggon … is one of the most assured of a new generation of Australian poets. A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Australian Poetry