AustLit

Dedication: To Vincent Buckley, Evan Jones, and Chris Wallace-Crabbe, who know better

Author's Introduction: ...But this is at least a book of personal enthusiasms, which may come to much the same thing. It expresses, and explores, a number of intertwining interests: in the motif of expatriation, in the character of a number of modern poems, and in the venture of poetry itself....The Oxford English Dictionary, that philosophical aide-memoire, points out that 'to expatriate' may be 'to drive (a person) away from his native country; to renounce one's allegiance'. Each of the dozen poems which provide the main points of reference in this book has something to do with one of these senses, and most have to do with both...' (xi-xiii).