South Country Comments

One of the greatest poems ever written by an Australian poet - could only dream of having an ear as good as Slessor's. The blanket 'anonymity' of the octave gives way to the panoramic quatrains; such a brutal, vivid description of the sky, when the 'monstrous continent of air floats back/Coloured with rotting sunlight and the black, /Bruised flesh of thunderstorms'. Then the momentum - and depth... looking down on a ridge as if it were a bony skull... reminds me too of that part in King Lear, when I think its poor Tom describes an imaginary cliff for the suicidal Gloucester to jump from... and Keats' rip from Shakespeare here in one of his letters... ('samphire gatherer... dreadful trade') .