Crete

by Dorothy Porter

From the award-winning creator of the international bestseller 'The Monkey's Mask' ('Banjo' winner and Age Book of the Year) comes an extraordinary work of the imagination. 'Crete' is a heady mix of dark humour, archaeology, breathtaking eroticism, risk-taking and effortless economy.

Genres: Poetry

114 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2000

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Eminent Australian poet. A rare proponent of the verse novel. Winner of The Age Book of the Year for poetry, and the National Book Council Award, for her verse novel The Monkey's Mask. She was awarded the Christopher Brennan Award for lifetime achievement in poetry in 2001. Died of breast cancer, 2008.

Reviews

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

As previously mentioned, I've started a one man Porter fan club. While Crete is not a novel in verse, it is very much in Porter's voice, and one reason for that is that the book involves an overall persona, pretty much throughout. While there are a couple of sexually heated poems, oddly enough, one will find more of that ilk in Akhenaten and Monkey's Paw. Roughly half the book's poems center around Crete and the Minoan civilization, other sections include odes to cigarette and love addiction, and a fine section entitled "Bone-burning Tunes," which I take to be introspectively of love, life, art, and selfhood. My advice? Read one or two of her novels first, and this collection will resonate even more. "My decaying lyre/glows green/under the rubbish mounds//dumped/it lies in wait/for someone's fossicking fingers//what bone-burning tunes/it will play/through that stray hand!

[Kat · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 & a half stars! The only reason it's not 5 is just bc I didn't love some sections as much as the others.

Truly, truly, truly wonderful writing with a distinct & unique voice, with gorgeous & sometimes strange imagery, beautiful and sometimes blunt, evocative language, which explores life & love & relationships & sex & death & art & mythology & all sorts of things. Really brilliant. I don't have words but it's just. So good.

[Jade O'Donohue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perfume and drowse

What makes our hands smoke?
What makes our fingers tigers?
We'd know each other in cinders
We'd know each other in stalk and spring
We'd know each other underwater
absent or present
We'd know
We'd always know.
But for now
perfume and drowse
perfume and drowse
for unreal and fabulous hours
hoarding each other
like fragrant narcotics.

[Astir]

Sapphic imagery, sapphic imagery, pagan-flavoured sapphic imagery, all-too-real fatalism, all-too-real fatalism personified through sapphic imagery. Would recommend to people who love fatalism and breasts.