AustLit

'Meditations on being and knowing habituate the text, whose speakers struggle to come to terms with their limitations: What can’t I know? What can’t I be? Stephen Edgar draws on a rich body of literature to explore ontologies and phenomenology, and crafts poems that are so dynamic, the reader will find him/herself in the text, throughout the text, as s/he asks new questions alongside the speakers, or perhaps identifies with one of the many voices that surface. Given the scope of philosophical and poetical thought from which the poet draws, not all referenced authors are mentioned explicitly. What one finds, then, is an intricate intertextuality in Edgar’s marvellous and marvelling tenth book, Exhibits of the Sun. In this way, form echoes content, in that what is seen or known is no more and no less important that what eludes one’s grasp.' (Introduction)