Glass Cathedrals

Synopsis

‘This new and selected poems from Nicolette Stasko provides us with a major survey of one of Australia’s best-loved poets. Taking her themes from everyday life and the natural world, this award-winning and much anthologized poetry delights, consoles and confronts us. Stasko is an internal émigré whose poignant observation and sumptuous language is filled with honesty and wit.’

Praise for this Book

‘Nicolette Stasko can make the still moment resonate. With an imagist's eye, she reaches deep below surfaces and pulls the unseen into a variegated light. Her poems are examinations of grief and joy, of frugality and abundance. Each poem is an engagement with the implications of seeing. They carry intensity with razor sharp precision.’ —John Kinsella

‘This second collection by Nicolette Stasko is further confirmation of an outstanding talent – generous illuminations of form and content in a rich tapestry of words – that was so much in evidence in her first book Abundance.’ —Bruce Beaver

‘In these “unshockable” times, here is a poetry that delivers – with an emotional intensity that can shock, even as its phrasing moves and delights. A very steady eye, a painter’s fascination with the objects of the world, the apparently solid as well as the ephemeral and delicate. The humour is magnanimous and also subtle, turning on the poet as often as it targets the world. A yearning beyond the tangible, for the intangible “thusnessess” where all language must stop.’ —J.S. Harry

‘Nicolette Stasko’s poems probe the edges of everyday experience, locating their reality somewhere between empirical and spiritual narratives. Her voices are direct, creating a sense of intimacy and honesty, yet she is able to use her painterly eye, imagistic economy and skilful lineation to suggest more than she says. It is as if the poems know a great hunger.’ —Noel Rowe