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Poetry

The Rearrangement by Alex Skovron

by Philip Salom
August 1989, no. 113

The Rearrangement by Alex Skovron

Melbourne University Press, 112 pp, $19.95 hb

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From the very beginning of The Rearrangement the reader is involved in themes which will play repeatedly through the poems: learning, knowledge and memory, and the way in which these work to satisfy, or frustrate, a metaphysical sense of order, even truth. There is a great fight against forgetfulness:

Trying to recall so much
            and so much more beyond recalling
If you do all this
            and still count yourself a survivor
            and expose your eye to the swivelling
                      moon
            and smile
            and swing your face into the clock be
                      hind you
            always behind you
If you do all this
            you will have conquered the invisible
                      again

            (from the opening poem ‘A Concise History of the Moon’)

 


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The Rearrangement by Alex Skovron

Melbourne University Press, 112 pp, $19.95 hb

ABR receives a commission on items purchased through this link. All ABR reviews are fully independent.


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