AustLit
Latest Issues
AbstractHistoryArchive Description
Notes
-
Contents indexed selectively.
Contents
-
“A Need for Voices” : The Poetry of Dennis Haskell,
single work
criticism
(p. 6-18)'This article presents a critical reading of the poetry of Dennis Haskell. Inspired by the experience of hearing the poet read, it uses the concept of poetic voice as an entry point for critical analysis. Haskell has described his poetic aim as being to “write a poetry that incorporates ideas but never ostentatiously … with as quiet as possible verbal skill, and in a way that evokes the deepest emotions” (Landbridge) . The paper identifies key aspects of voice in the poetry, drawing on arguments by Robert Pinsky and Al Alvarez that voice implies a reaching out to an auditor or reader, and thus has social and cultural dimensions. Attending to both technique and meaning, it first analyses two short lyric poems by Haskell, “One Clear Call” and “The Call,” which explore the power of voice in poetic and pre-linguistic settings respectively. Poetic voice becomes a vehicle of social critique in “Australian Language’s Tribute to the Times,” a bemused satire on the clichéd language of modern politics and economics. In the next section of the paper the focus shifts to his recurrent creative interest in poems of international travel and in particular international flight. The experience of flying is the subject of lucid, practical philosophical reflections in “GA873: The Meaning of Meaning” and “Reality’s Conquests,” while in “As You Are, As We Are” and “Our Century,” Haskell presents vivid intercultural encounters in a voice that is candid, observant and responsive to others.' (Publication abstract)
-
The Poetry of Dennis Haskell : Stylisation and Elegy,
single work
criticism
(p. 19-35)'In this essay I concentrate on the elegiac poetry of the Australian poet Dennis Haskell. I argue that the emphasis in Haskell’s work on the quotidian, clarity of expression and the communication of emotion, has a material effect on the ways in which Haskell approaches the elegiac project: the poetic expression of grief in the face of loss. In the essay I identify three main classes of elegy in Haskell’s oeuvre: elegies for fellow poets (which, after Lawrence Lipking, I call “tombeaux”); the familial elegy; and the spousal elegy. Haskell’s engagement with the genre of the elegy therefore occupies a spectrum between what might be termed “public” elegies, and “intimate” elegies. As I discuss, the intimate elegies indicate a more profound, and sometimes troubled, engagement with the genre of elegy, tipping on occasion in anti -elegy and self-elegy. By undertaking textual analyses of various poems from within the three classes of elegy practised by Haskell, I illustrate the different ways in which he deals with one of the most profound problems that faces an elegist: how to express the profound emotion of grief through the affordances of poetic stylisation.' (Publication abstract)
-
The Sliding Scale of Self-Repair in Dennis Haskell’s Acts of Defiance,
single work
criticism
(p. 36-57)'The contemporary lyric’s rich possibilities for resituating history and life stories still remain largely unexplored. Lyric poetry and history have always had, understandably, an uneasy relationship; the lyric is traditionally linked to the symbolic, not to fact or even necessarily, as we know from medieval or earlier poems, to a speaker that we can name or authorise. Yet, the instrument and agency of lyric evolve too, like science and technology, making room for strengths previously unexploited, rooted and waiting. Dennis Haskell’s powerful body of work, balancing on a delicate and self-referential focus on human language itself, offers us a glimpse into the future. This article offers a critical study of 21st ecosystems of human language, as acts of self-repair, a perspective permeating Dennis Haskell’s pioneering and poetic cycle of work, resonant with medical discoveries in our era. As we look ahead through the lens of Haskell’s “geographies of time,” we also explore lyric legacies of the elegiac, pointing us to update continuously our apprehension of the human body of language among the larger balances, of earth and space, and, then again, with one another, up close.' (Publication abstract)
-
Provisional Meanings : Belonging and Not-Belonging in the Poetry of Dennis Haskell,
single work
criticism
(p. 58-69)
'Dennis Haskell’s poetry persistently explores images of home and departure. As it does, it questions what we may know and depend on, suggesting that many of our understandings are provisional. Haskell’s poetry also contrasts what is imagined and desired with what is knowable – giving prominence to quotidian knowledge and observable reality – and restlessly explores the relationship of religious belief to lived experience. In this light, the elegiac strand in his work becomes a way of probing the gap between death and the limitations of language, highlighting the sometimes problematic relationship between thought and expression. Yet, poetry provides a means of access to otherwise unapproachable thoughts and feelings and connects the poet (and reader) to an articulate human community. It enables the delineation of a simultaneously observant, detached and engaged subjectivity that consistently seeks to find connections – whether at home, while travelling or in international settings. This poetry joins the familiar and unfamiliar in works that question how people understand one another and their unique circumstances, and how the ineffable, while it may be evoked in words, nevertheless retains its deep mysteries. Haskell is interested in the ways in which we make and disturb meaning, and in questioning how belief in God or an afterlife may be understood despite scepticism and doubt.' (Publication abstract)
-
Love, Death and Memories : On Dennis Haskell’s Rhonda Poems,
single work
criticism
(p. 70-88)'Dennis Haskell’s Rhonda poems are undoubtedly the most brilliant and important part of his poetry in the sense that he wrote passionately about love, death and memories in relation to Rhonda in them. As Haskell’s wife and lifelong love, Rhonda not only played a central part in his life and writing, but shaped and deepened his perception of humanity and human relationships. Despite the great impact of Modernism on modern and contemporary English poetry, Haskell’s poetry is strikingly personal, accessible and lyrical. In his work, Haskell seeks to present the approximately genuine pictures of aspects of human relationships in terms of love, death and memories and ultimately, strives to make sense of the dynamics of love in our mundane life.' (Publication abstract)
-
Interview with Dennis Haskell : A Snapshot from 2008,
Lucy Dougan
(interviewer),
single work
interview
(p. 89-100)
'The following interview with Dennis Haskell was commissioned by Donna Ward, who was then editor and publisher of Indigo: Journal of West Australian Writing. The issue appeared in the Autumn of 2008. In this sense it is a snapshot of Haskell at a particular moment of his rich and on-going career. My particular intention was to trace the ways in which Haskell’s aesthetic and moral orientations as both a poet and a critic stem from his formative experiences, including family background, class, education, reading and the place in which he grew up. Beneath his honest and acute responses one can trace not only the lineaments of Australia’s “poetry wars” but also the impacts of those real wars (WW II, Vietnam and Iraq) on his imaginative life and stance as a poet. Haskell is not a predictable subject to interview. For instance, his statement that “it is important to write about domestic spaces” would perhaps sit at odds with a male poet of his generation. Looking back down the years to this interview with a valued teacher and trojan worker for literature in many countries and many contexts, I would argue that it is Haskell’s iconoclastic character that has kept his practice sharp, surprising and “on song.” The question posed by the poem “Doubt and Trembling” that I discussed with him – “How do we get by/ in a dubious time” – seems in 2019 more relevant than ever.' (Publication abstract)
- In the Company of Cavafyi"To arrive is not the point", single work poetry (p. 101)
- Sweeney’s Homage to Dennis from the Wheatbelt to the Perth Coastal Plain, River, Oceani"All that elegance of perception", single work poetry (p. 102-103)
- Double Self Portraiti"As children we’d make believe we were soldiers,", single work poetry (p. 104-105)
- Big Skies, Inner Raini"Rain, bleak grey skies and blackbirds", single work poetry (p. 106-109)
- Revisiting St John of God Hospital, Subiacoi"Mangling the letter about research", single work poetry (p. 110-111)
- Go Gentlyi"I come to see you this one last time", single work poetry (p. 112)
- Time Machinesi"I bring up photos on screen,", single work poetry (p. 113)
- Gone Awayi"Visiting Taiwan, and alone with my grandson,", single work poetry (p. 114-115)
- The Mystery Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulpi"Like a butcher lifting meat in his shop", single work poetry (p. 116)
- Hashtag Me Tooi"Fear-white body beside rumpled clothes,", single work poetry (p. 118)
- Yeti"I wake beside a hunk of concrete", single work poetry (p. 120-121)
