AustLit

Stewart argues that the "vagueness" critics have found in Neilson's poetry should be seen as a "mysterious quality", not a "lack of mastery over syntax and design". Because Neilson treats life as an illusion reality becomes a mystery, the unknowable. A fuller understanding of this aspect enables a new approach to the language of Neilson's poetry and reveals a "private symbolic code pointing to an awareness of mystical unity".