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Orpheus in the Undershirt
Year
2018
Language
ENGLISH
Publication Information
Ginninderra Press
Summary
With Orpheus in the Undershirt, Kevin Densley has produced his best book yet: sharp but not cutting, tart but not cynical, the collection weaves lyric, barb and lament into a marvelous, prickly garment that soothes as it stimulates. Don't like small, evocative poems as clear and complex as rockpools? Dive into an eight-page outlaw fistfight roaring with dust and despair. Not interested in, 'When Johnstone's Circus Came to Town'? (Though why wouldn't you be, with its 'toupeed ringmaster/in a red lamé suit' and aromatic 'strong whiff of manure'?) Explore instead the death of a bantam 'inside the chookhouse/among the warm chooky smells'. Unlike most collections which attempt to blend 'high' and 'low' culture, to find the charge of destiny in the nuts-and-bolts of the everyday, Orpheus does it effortlessly, without need of gimmicks or creaky, overbearing conceits. Here Kevin Densley fuses the marvels and mundanities of life into a witty, searching collection that sings the subtleties of both.