AustLit
Latest Issues
Contents
- Beware of Broken Glass: Models in a Room of Mirrors, single work prose (p. 28-41)
- The Quaker Graveyard in Carlton, single work prose (p. 42-53)
- The American Model: Penelope or Circe?, single work prose (p. 54-68)
- Democratic Repression: The Ethnic Strain, single work criticism (p. 84-98)
- Anaesthetics : Some Notes on the New Australian Poetry, single work criticism (p. 99-116)
- Poetry and Living: An Evaluation of the American Poetic Tradition, single work prose (p. 117-136)
- Ease of American Language, single work prose (p. 137-159)
- Public Voices and Private Feeling, single work criticism (p. 160-172)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
-
Essential Gossip : Allen Ginsberg, Robert Duncan and U.S.-Australian Poetics
2023
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Cordite Poetry Review , 1 February no. 108 2023;'In 1985, when the bulky anthology Technicians of the Sacred: A Range of Poetries from Africa, America, Asia, Europe and Oceania (first published in 1968) was printed in a new edition, it was advertised with the curious dust jacket recommendation: ‘hailed by the Los Angeles Times Book Review as one of the hundred most recommended American books of the last thirty-five years’. The volume’s inclusion on this list is remarkable, for, as an anthology of world poetry, it is not in any simple or traditional sense an ‘American book.’ Its opening sequence, titled ‘Origins and Namings,’ includes selections drawn from Central Australian Arrernte song cycles, passages of the Chinese I Ching and text from a shrine to Tutankhamun, all carefully organised to mirror the narrative and themes of the Biblical genesis myth (5-45). But for the Los Angeles Times Book Review, the anthology’s status as an ‘American book’ rests on the credentials of collection’s poet-editor, Jerome Rothenberg, who not only selected and arranged these foreign texts, but appended each with his own copious annotations and explanatory notes. Indeed, as Rothenberg contends in a Foreword to the collection, it is from his position as an anthologist that he rescues various religious or anthropological works, claiming them for genre of poetry. His insight, as one reviewer puts it, was twofold: that ‘poetry could be drawn from ritualistic experiences, chants, incantations, and shamanic visions that originated in Africa, Asia, Oceania, or within Native American groups’ and that ‘cutting-edge (American) avant-garde poetic advances (find) unexpected resonances in these ancient texts’ (Marmer). John Vernon concurs, describing Rothenberg’s anthology as having ‘all the earmarks (…) of a search for land, that is, a search for America, for an American tradition’ (825). For Rothenberg, contemporary American poetry must act as a creative archaeology of geography and origins: U.S. poets, he suggested, were not only reckoning with their present or future, but also re-staging their relation to the history of world poetry.' (Introduction)
-
Smooth and Troubled Passages Across the Pacific
2010
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Reading Across the Pacific : Australia-United States Intellectual Histories 2010; (p. 119-148) 'How do American poets see Australia in their poems? How do Australian poets see America in their poems? These two questions are answered in part by attention to several poets on either side of the Pacific. In America: Karl Shapiro, Herbert Morris, John Ashbery, John Koethe, August Kleinzahler. And in Australia: Les Murray, John Forbes, John Tranter, Robert Adamson and Robert Gray.' (Authors's abstract) -
Untitled
1984
single work
review
— Appears in: Ariel , April vol. 15 no. 2 1984; (p. 120-123)
— Review of The American Model : Influence and Independence in Australian Poetry 1982 anthology criticism prose -
Untitled
1983
single work
review
— Appears in: World Literature Written in English , Autumn vol. 22 no. 2 1983; (p. 232-234)
— Review of The American Model : Influence and Independence in Australian Poetry 1982 anthology criticism prose -
The Learning Experience as Ethics
1983
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , August no. 53 1983; (p. 29)
— Review of The American Model : Influence and Independence in Australian Poetry 1982 anthology criticism prose
-
Untitled
1982
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , October vol. 10 no. 4 1982; (p. 544-547)
— Review of Cross Currents : Magazines and Newspapers in Australian Literature 1981 anthology criticism biography autobiography ; The American Model : Influence and Independence in Australian Poetry 1982 anthology criticism prose -
American Graffiti, or 'I'm Living in the Seventies'
1982
single work
review
— Appears in: Meanjin , Summer vol. 41 no. 4 1982; (p. 479-485)
— Review of A Possible Contemporary Poetry : Interviews with Thirteen Poets from the New Australian Poetry 1982 selected work interview ; The American Model : Influence and Independence in Australian Poetry 1982 anthology criticism prose -
No Cure for the Common Cold in Bad Literature
1982
single work
review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 17 April 1982; (p. 14)
— Review of The American Model : Influence and Independence in Australian Poetry 1982 anthology criticism prose ; Early Australian Poetry : An Annotated Bibliography of Original Poems Published in Australian Newspapers, Magazines and Almanacks Before 1850 1982 single work bibliography -
Tracing the American Connection
1982
single work
review
— Appears in: The Age , 5 June 1982; (p. 15)
— Review of The American Model : Influence and Independence in Australian Poetry 1982 anthology criticism prose -
US Influence Came Sooner Than Our Poets Think
1982
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 1 May 1982; (p. 44)
— Review of The American Model : Influence and Independence in Australian Poetry 1982 anthology criticism prose -
Smooth and Troubled Passages Across the Pacific
2010
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Reading Across the Pacific : Australia-United States Intellectual Histories 2010; (p. 119-148) 'How do American poets see Australia in their poems? How do Australian poets see America in their poems? These two questions are answered in part by attention to several poets on either side of the Pacific. In America: Karl Shapiro, Herbert Morris, John Ashbery, John Koethe, August Kleinzahler. And in Australia: Les Murray, John Forbes, John Tranter, Robert Adamson and Robert Gray.' (Authors's abstract) -
The Australian Model? : American Writing and Australian Poetry
1983
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Overland , August no. 92 1983; (p. 46-54) -
Essential Gossip : Allen Ginsberg, Robert Duncan and U.S.-Australian Poetics
2023
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Cordite Poetry Review , 1 February no. 108 2023;'In 1985, when the bulky anthology Technicians of the Sacred: A Range of Poetries from Africa, America, Asia, Europe and Oceania (first published in 1968) was printed in a new edition, it was advertised with the curious dust jacket recommendation: ‘hailed by the Los Angeles Times Book Review as one of the hundred most recommended American books of the last thirty-five years’. The volume’s inclusion on this list is remarkable, for, as an anthology of world poetry, it is not in any simple or traditional sense an ‘American book.’ Its opening sequence, titled ‘Origins and Namings,’ includes selections drawn from Central Australian Arrernte song cycles, passages of the Chinese I Ching and text from a shrine to Tutankhamun, all carefully organised to mirror the narrative and themes of the Biblical genesis myth (5-45). But for the Los Angeles Times Book Review, the anthology’s status as an ‘American book’ rests on the credentials of collection’s poet-editor, Jerome Rothenberg, who not only selected and arranged these foreign texts, but appended each with his own copious annotations and explanatory notes. Indeed, as Rothenberg contends in a Foreword to the collection, it is from his position as an anthologist that he rescues various religious or anthropological works, claiming them for genre of poetry. His insight, as one reviewer puts it, was twofold: that ‘poetry could be drawn from ritualistic experiences, chants, incantations, and shamanic visions that originated in Africa, Asia, Oceania, or within Native American groups’ and that ‘cutting-edge (American) avant-garde poetic advances (find) unexpected resonances in these ancient texts’ (Marmer). John Vernon concurs, describing Rothenberg’s anthology as having ‘all the earmarks (…) of a search for land, that is, a search for America, for an American tradition’ (825). For Rothenberg, contemporary American poetry must act as a creative archaeology of geography and origins: U.S. poets, he suggested, were not only reckoning with their present or future, but also re-staging their relation to the history of world poetry.' (Introduction)
