Peripheral Light: Selected and New Poems

by John Kinsella, Harold Bloom (Introduction)

"We are poised before...what I prophesy will be a major art."―Harold Bloom

"One of Australia's most vivid, energetic and stormy poets, a writer who turns to the natural world with a fierce light."―Edward Hirsch, Washington Post Highly Recommended Poetry Books of 2003

Genres: Poetry, Australia

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

John Kinsella is the author of more than twenty collections of poetry. The recipient of the Christopher Brennan Award, he has taught at Cambridge University and Kenyon College. He lives in Western Australia.

Reviews

[Addy]

I really do not care about nature poetry by white men

[Andrew Mcgowan]

There are many great poems in this collection, but some don't seem to fit with the over-arching theme.

[Christopher Flynn]

I dip into this one now and then. I like Kinsella's careful choice of words ... lots of consonants, many unexpected choices, where a poet like Eavan Boland would tell you what she thinks in the most direct way. Kinsella definitely uses word choices to slow you down and make you taste his phrases, chew on them a bit.

For example:

Oyster catchers
scout the tight rutilic
beach rust charting

run-off locked
cross-rock up-coast
from the bolted

lighthouse
where two oceans
surge & rip & meet.

(from Skippy Rock, Augusta: Warning, the undertow)

The language reminds me of Heaney, while the sparseness is more Louise Gluck.