AustLit

Each 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)

'This is an important and timely book from a mature, perspicacious voice. Phyllis Perlstone shows us a Monash behind the image on the $100 bank note: the engineer, innovator, man-about-town, husband, father, warrior, tactician; his love affairs and vanities; the prejudice he encounters and regards as ‘strange dislike’. Monash’s life and Australia’s times start up from within the lines of poetry, dealing with brilliant but conflicted events and ideals. The poems move back and forth in time to regard the past and its values with a present perspective.' (Publication summary)

'These poems are concerned with the way in which language can thicken our experience, even as that experience becomes attenuated through age and through an increasing distance from a complex and alienating modern urban environment.' Back cover.

As the title of this book suggests, these poems are concerned with the way in which language can thicken our experience, even as that experience becomes attenuated through age, and increasingly ensconced within a complex and modern urban environment. This is a moving collection, which develops from the edge of everything and moves towards a comprehensive summation of a poetic sensibility preoccupied with its transience.

'Don’t turn to this book for the facile or expect platitudes. Perlstone wrenches language and syntax to deliver to you an edgy and unique perspective. Well crafted, these poems are hard-won gems of insight. Follow her lens - she will (to misquote her) ‘... give you a reason to turn somewhere in your own mind'.

— Anna Kerdijk Nicholson' (Publisher's website)