AustLit

'L.K. Holt does not wear her learning lightly, and unless her intention is simply to impress with evocative terms and exotic references, she presumably expects her readers to do some heavy duty investigative work on Google. The first poem in the collection, “Man is Wolf to Man” depicts man’s bestial violence, a violence that seems biologically determined, or divinely ordained: “A man hangs / like an amulet. His death to counter- / weight the deaths by his hand, / assuming God has a sense of balance.” The enjambment of counter- / weight dividing His death from deaths by his hand, although predictable, is nonetheless effective, but the following line, “The skeleton in the sand of Ash Sham” sends us scurrying to discover that Ash Sham is another name for Damascus. Further enquiry reveals that in the twelfth century there was indeed a man of violence, Reginald of Chatillon-sur-Marne, a Frankish crusader, known as “The Wolf” by the afflicted Damascenes. Is this what she is referring to? But surely a crusader would not have worn a “Shirt unbuttoned / to show a cage of sand, the blindfold / blown off his three eyeholes.” No, she must be referring to the murder of a hostage by terrorists, or perhaps the victim of a CIA operation. Who knows? Is this our task as readers, to try and find out?' (Introduction)