Joseph Brodsky, the Russian Nobel laureate, once remarked that memory
and art have in common the 'ability to select, a taste for detail.' In
the work of Nathanael O'Reilly, memory and art come together to bring us
poems that remember what cannot-what must not-be forgotten, in rich and
telling detail and with a taste for quiet but incisive irony.--Paul Kane
***Nathanael O'Reilly's poems sound the major themes of Australian
poetry: landscape, displacement, yearning, and above all a critique of
cultural narrowness. O'Reilly's plain-spoken diction is often laced with
understated wit, but is given ballast by its principled grounding in
lived experience.--Nicholas Birns ***The poems in this transnational,
cosmopolitan collection traverse fourteen countries, from Australia, the
poet's homeland, to the United States, his place of residence, making
stops in ancestral homelands Ireland and England, and passing through
continental Europe and the Middle East. O'Reilly's poetry continually
crosses both visible and invisible borders, excavating landscapes and
the local, belonging and unbelonging, cross-cultural exchanges,
expatriation, globalisation, exile, identity, youth, loss,
relationships, aging, and death. The speakers in the poems are often in
motion or making preparations for departure, unwilling and unable to
remain static, always eager to explore. (Series: UWAP Poetry) [Subject:
Poetry]
