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Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Phyllis Perlstone Reviews Cities by Petra White
2023
single work
review
— Appears in: Mascara Literary Review , no. 29 2023;
— Review of Cities 2021 selected work poetryEach time I have read Cities, I have felt more of the affect of the poetical language. Yet there is a way of looking at it as a whole. Given Petra White’s themes, I can’t help alluding to Adrienne Rich’s Diving into the Wreck, also Sylvia Plath’s last book Ariel. White dives into the myths to find past definitions for past and present human roles : “Tell me what a mother is”. (Introduction)
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Gareth Morgan Reviews Cities by Petra White
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Cordite Poetry Review , 1 June no. 105 2022;
— Review of Cities 2021 selected work poetry'Petra White’s poetry has been highly and widely praised, celebrated for its seriousness, its engagement with poets like Petrarch, Dante, Coleridge and Donne, its ability to ‘recall’ these famous European names and their famous poems. She is presented as a serious poet, and has managed to get her ‘kind of Collected-poems-so-far’ (Duwell) onto the VCE Literature text list. I wonder what this says about poetry in Australia. Her poems are so good on one metric (studious, ‘clever’, instructive), and so bad, downright naughty, on another (stylistic and/or political ‘radicalness’).' (Introduction)
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Unhappiness and Related Fields
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Meanjin , Autumn vol. 81 no. 1 2022; Meanjin Online 2022;
— Review of Trigger Warning 2021 selected work poetry ; Cities 2021 selected work poetry ; An Academic’s Tour of Hell 2021 selected work poetry ; Take Care 2021 selected work poetry ; Sydney Spleen 2021 selected work poetry -
Petra White : Cities
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Poetry Review , no. 16 2021;
— Review of Cities 2021 selected work poetry 'Petra White’s Cities is a slim book by current standards but it is a dense one and there is a lot to be said for connecting it to its predecessor, Reading for a Quiet Morning. Both, for instance, begin by broaching crucial themes in the form of a revisiting and reconstruction of an existing myth. In Reading for a Quiet Morning the myth revisited was Ezekiel’s strange visions “at the edge of the Chebar” during the Babylonian exile. In Cities it is the old Greek story of Demeter and her lost daughter, Persephone. Taking an even longer perspective we can see that White has often employed sequences to work away at a theme and often these sequences are comprised of quite different poems. What strikes me about “How the Temple was Built” – the long sequence based around Ezekiel – and “Demeter”, is the way they each seem bifurcated, able to develop in two different directions.' (Introduction)
-
Petra White : Cities
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Poetry Review , no. 16 2021;
— Review of Cities 2021 selected work poetry 'Petra White’s Cities is a slim book by current standards but it is a dense one and there is a lot to be said for connecting it to its predecessor, Reading for a Quiet Morning. Both, for instance, begin by broaching crucial themes in the form of a revisiting and reconstruction of an existing myth. In Reading for a Quiet Morning the myth revisited was Ezekiel’s strange visions “at the edge of the Chebar” during the Babylonian exile. In Cities it is the old Greek story of Demeter and her lost daughter, Persephone. Taking an even longer perspective we can see that White has often employed sequences to work away at a theme and often these sequences are comprised of quite different poems. What strikes me about “How the Temple was Built” – the long sequence based around Ezekiel – and “Demeter”, is the way they each seem bifurcated, able to develop in two different directions.' (Introduction) -
Unhappiness and Related Fields
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Meanjin , Autumn vol. 81 no. 1 2022; Meanjin Online 2022;
— Review of Trigger Warning 2021 selected work poetry ; Cities 2021 selected work poetry ; An Academic’s Tour of Hell 2021 selected work poetry ; Take Care 2021 selected work poetry ; Sydney Spleen 2021 selected work poetry -
Gareth Morgan Reviews Cities by Petra White
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Cordite Poetry Review , 1 June no. 105 2022;
— Review of Cities 2021 selected work poetry'Petra White’s poetry has been highly and widely praised, celebrated for its seriousness, its engagement with poets like Petrarch, Dante, Coleridge and Donne, its ability to ‘recall’ these famous European names and their famous poems. She is presented as a serious poet, and has managed to get her ‘kind of Collected-poems-so-far’ (Duwell) onto the VCE Literature text list. I wonder what this says about poetry in Australia. Her poems are so good on one metric (studious, ‘clever’, instructive), and so bad, downright naughty, on another (stylistic and/or political ‘radicalness’).' (Introduction)
-
Phyllis Perlstone Reviews Cities by Petra White
2023
single work
review
— Appears in: Mascara Literary Review , no. 29 2023;
— Review of Cities 2021 selected work poetryEach time I have read Cities, I have felt more of the affect of the poetical language. Yet there is a way of looking at it as a whole. Given Petra White’s themes, I can’t help alluding to Adrienne Rich’s Diving into the Wreck, also Sylvia Plath’s last book Ariel. White dives into the myths to find past definitions for past and present human roles : “Tell me what a mother is”. (Introduction)
