The Ladder , livre ebook

Puncher & Wattmann - Simon West

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49 pages

English

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The Ladder is Simon West's third collection of poetry, and his first in four years. Many earlier preoccupations return-the natural environment, Italian art, the dimensions of place. There is a new focus on worldly and artistic responsibility, and finding that 'certain poise' of 'being in between'. At the collection's heart are the building blocks of language, along with the more literal ones of Rome, where some of these poems were written during a residency at the Whiting studio in 2012.

Sujets

Oceanian

Australian

Poetry

Informations

Publié par	Puncher & Wattmann
Date de parution	01 février 2023
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781922571786
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0400€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

By the same author

First Names (2006)
The Selected Poetry of Guido Cavalcanti (2009)
The Yellow Gum’s Conversion (2011)

© Simon West 2015
This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of study and research, criticism, review or as otherwise permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be made to the publisher.
First published in 2015
Published by Puncher and Wattmann PO Box 441 Glebe NSW 2037
http://www.puncherandwattmann.com puncherandwattmann@bigpond.com
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry: West, Simon The Ladder ISBN 9781922186768 (paperback) ISBN 9781922571786 (ebook) I. Title. A821.3
Cover design by Matthew Holt
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

for Anita

L’aiuola che ci fa tanto feroci,
volgendom’ io con li etterni Gemelli,
tutta m’apparve da’ colli a le foci;
poscia rivolsi li occhi a li occhi belli.
– Dante
Contents
Roman Bridges
Climbing the Tower of Babel
Ala di Stura – Valli di Lanzo
After Reading a Poem by Du Fu
The Perfection of Apollo
The Taking Up of Earthly Pursuits
A Plein-Air Artist Reflects on Timing
Outside on a Warm Evening I Consider My Confused Ideas About Poetry
On the Relative Values of Our Age
Speckled World
To the Morning’s Gods
Eaves
Meetings with Morpheus
Hail Guns in the Goulburn Valley
The Mallee Singer
Meditations on a Pebble Beach

Three Poems
Looking at St Christopher
Sassetta’s Burning of the Heretic
Tintoretto’s Miracle of San Marco

Nothing Ventured
The Silver Birch
The Sports Oval
The Sinker
An Exile Writes a Letter Home

Roman Dozen
An Encounter
Building the Temple of Jupiter
The Drapery
Madonna della neve
At the Monument to Unknown Gods
Service Overdue
Conversion
Quandary
Bestiary
The Sculptor and the Acanthus
The Go-Between

Chimera
Learning to Read
Roman Bridges
The springing point was where they lifted off,
where the impost, set down on good footings,
joined the arch to ensure its leap and span
of water’s being there and flowing on.

And though the weight of flight thrust back
so that each ounce of stone knew pull,
still to the eye the curve sprang free and satisfied.
And does yet. As if

there were grace in holding gravity at bay
and a certain poise in being in between.
My ideal landscape has room for bridges and hills,
spires, birds and echoes: halfway things.
Climbing the Tower of Babel
An avowal of speech itself. Mouth muscles heaving
in a new element beyond the habit of murmur.
After the guttural sound-weights of home
it felt like always saying enunciation .

In time the tongue learnt how to dart and poise,
to roll its r ’s, leap for double consonants,
to tell the glee of i , the air of e .
Some nouns still undid all zeal. I mumbled

last vowels doubtfully, and doubt echoed,
‘This isn’t yours to call your own’.
It was lo