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Orchestrating the gaps

by
August 2014, no. 363

Ecstacies and Elegies: Poems by Paul Carter

UWA Publishing, $24.99 pb, 188 pp

Orchestrating the gaps

by
August 2014, no. 363

It may seem strange to begin a review of Paul Carter’s extraordinary poetry collection by quoting the words of another writer, but these lines of Boris Pasternak’s – taken from his essay in The Poet’s Work (1989), a collection of writings by twentieth-century poets on their art – seem particularly pertinent:

By its inborn faculty of hearing, poetry
seeks out the melody of
nature amid the tumult of the
dictionary, and then, picking it up
as one picks up a tune, abandons itself to
improvisation upon that theme.
Jennifer Harrison reviews 'Ecstacies and Elegies: Poems' by Paul Carter

Ecstacies and Elegies: Poems

by Paul Carter

UWA Publishing, $24.99 pb, 188 pp

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Comments (2)

  • Pat, you mean 'ecstasies'? That aside, the question is apposite. Where does Carter's spelling of the word come from? Anyone?
    Posted by altercatio
    26 September 2014
  • Since when did 'ectasies' become 'ecstacies'?
    Posted by Patrick Buckridge
    26 August 2014

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