Quadrant articles from June 2001

Quadrant archives from June 2001

POLITICAL BIAS IN THE ARTS AND LITERATURE.
June 1, 2001... PROBABLY NO JOURNAL more than Quadrant understands the double standards which operate in cultural, artistic and intellectual funding in this country. From the very beginning the charge that Quadrant had, knowingly or unknowingly (as far as its...

LETTERS.
June 1, 2001... ROBERT MANNE AND QUADRANT SIR: Robert Manne has been rewriting history again, this time accusing Quadrant and like-minded people of running a sinister campaign against the "Bringing Them Home" report. This is actually a case of role...

A Letter to Clyde Packer.(Obituary)
June 1, 2001... The Honourable Robert Clyde Packer, a long-time friend and supporter of Quadrant, died recently at the age of sixty-six. The following was read at the memorial service for him in Sydney's St James' Church on 15th May 2001, on behalf of Barry...

SAVING THE DYING WARRIORS.(Review)
June 1, 2001... WHY WARRIORS LIE DOWN AND DIE explores how and why a proud and strong Aboriginal people, the Yolngu of eastern Arnhem Land, lost control of their lives and well-being. Their tragic loss occurred within the last century, and for the most part,...

IS THERE A REASONABLE RELATIVISM?(responding to Sam Roggeveen's theories on relativism)(Critical Essay)
June 1, 2001... EXTREME RELATIVISM probably isn't explicitly accepted by even the most scatter-brained of postmodernists or sociologists of science, Most postmodern views certainly lead to extreme relativism, and in some cases amount to little more than...

NOT QUIET ENOUGH.(Poem)
June 1, 2001... Dread and sorrow reaching, in time, into many reaches, there comes the hour I wonder if my husband left me because I was not quiet enough in our bed. I can hardly see those nights and afternoons, any more, those...

GRAZIER ALERT.(Poem)
June 1, 2001... The air's like fruit juice. Threatening sticky. She wonders (aloud)whether knucklebones are perhaps off sheep (if only sheep had FISTS instead of those dutiful feet) The sheep's feet have been making ...

LONDON TO LEURA: A CRITIC'S JOURNEY.(Giles Auty)(Critical Essay)
June 1, 2001... PART 1 MY LATE FATHER, Roland Ainsworth Auty, died of a heart attack in 1967 when living in England on the Isle of Wight. If more modern intensive care facilities had been available locally at the time I suspect he might have lived a...

WHAT BECAME OF OLIVER BENTLEY?(romantic lyricism)(Critical Essay)
June 1, 2001... AN ESSAY ON ROMANTIC LYRICISM WHEN I WAS a junior boy in the English boarding school where I spent six years, there was a senior called Oliver Bentley. Now, these the early 1960s and, while the school was an extraordinary one in its...

THE NEW KINCHIN LAY.(children and mass media)(Critical Essay)
June 1, 2001... ABOUT FIVE years ago, there was a road accident in the country just north of Melbourne. A car carrying a family plunged down an embankment, injuring all the occupants except a six-year-old boy, and trapping them in the wreckage. The boy managed...

DETECTIVE KARMA'S NOTES.(Poem)
June 1, 2001... Sunday evening. Preswylfa. Body sprawled on the staircase, a knife observed in the old lady's back. Deacon, respectable woman, in her nightwear. Two emotional daughters--archivist, poet. House spotless--scent of...

THE POET'S CONFESSION.(Poem)
June 1, 2001... "It was me who murdered the Welsh language. I'm sure of that. I failed to utter what she needed. Said too little far too late and now--silence. Arrest me for negligence. I just couldn't persuade her to stay,...

INTERVIEW WITH THE POET.(Poem)
June 1, 2001... I started to translate in seventy-three in the school yard. For a bit of fun to begin with--the occasional "fuck" for the bite of another language's smoke in the back of my throat, its bitter chemicals. Soon I was...

THE FINAL MINUTES.(Poem)
June 1, 2001... The end was dreadful. Inside, a dam burst and blood was everywhere. Out of her mouth came torrents of words da yw dant i atal tafod, gogoniannau'r Tad in scarlet flowers--yn Abercuawg yd ganant gogau... --the blood...

PATHOLOGY REPORT.(Poem)
June 1, 2001... The Facts Description Female, five foot, extremely old. Quite healthy, though. Has kept her teeth. Injuries Had met with an accident, as if she'd been trampled underfoot by a mob. Mud in the wounds,...

THE FORGETTING BEGINS.(Poem)
June 1, 2001... Today the "sigl-di-gwt" became a wagtail. I watched closely as the stream's printing press moved the day's newspapers down from the mountains to be torn up in the village's shredder. The wagtail...

MANAGING YOUR MIND.
June 1, 2001... QUIET, PLEASE. I am trying to meditate. I am sitting cross-legged on the floor, because this is what I have been advised to do. The body forms a stable triangle in this position. But it hurts. Almost anything is more interesting than...

SURF DAY.(Poem)
June 1, 2001... The drinking corner has hatless men and the sun extorting sweat Beautiful! Blue fish abound here. But surf day is young. There is no music happening in Bronte Park: only drumming. Utungun...

ON EGALITARIANISM AND EQUALITY.(erosion of Australia's egalitarian society)
June 1, 2001... IN 1955, in his book Good Behaviour, the British diplomat and writer Harold Nicolson wrote: In an epoch when egalitarianism is quickly expanding, when the whole earth is menaced by uniformity, it is comforting to recall that mankind...

WHERE WAS IT.(Poem)
June 1, 2001... Maybe it lived in a canopic jar on her bureau, among the perfume bottles concocted of crystals cut open to the heart, or maybe it was down in the basement, behind the furnace, almost the size of the furnace, dressed in...

OWNING.(Poem)
June 1, 2001... The year's irritations and blemishes are lying on other people. He is composed and yet excited, like the best music: every vibration here is played for him. Boulders are set firmly into hillsides that are tasting...

MAJOR POLLUTER SHUNS KYOTO CONFERENCE.(Phillip Arblaster)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2001... A "Categorical refusal" by Australia's biggest air polluter to limit its emissions has brought the Kyoto II conference on atmospheric damage limitation to a stalemate. Conference organisers say the sticking point was a demand that the ABC,...

Not Quite Coping.(Brief Article)
June 1, 2001... "The last scene, in which the Madonna character appears to intentionally crash her car, is far from a glorification of violence. Whether or not the crash results in the deaths of the car's occupants is almost irrelevant. It is apparent that...

BEAUTY AND THE WIT.
June 1, 2001... "I was shocked to find the Age had published nude photographs of Senator Natasha Stott-Despoja. Then I realised the headline read `Despoja Topples Lees', and not `Despoja Topless, Yea'." Letter in the Melbourne Age.

PAUSE FOR REFLECTION.(one man's effort to apologize to Australian Aborigines for actions taken against them more than 30 years ago)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2001... WHAT A LOT OF FUSS and bother there is about the simple little word "sorry"! So much huffing and puffing by politicians over whether they should say it or not! And yet it is a word we ordinary mortals use every day, if we bump against someone...

PROPERTIES MORAL AND COMIC.(response to review of James R. Flynn's book 'How to Defend Humane Ideals')(Critical Essay)
June 1, 2001... How terrifying and glorious the role of man if, indeed, without guidance and without consolation he must create from his own vitals the meaning for his existence and write the rules whereby he lives. --Thornton Wilder, speaking on behalf of...

THE TOILET CLEANER AND THE LEAK.(indigenous affairs and Australian government)(Critical Essay)
June 1, 2001... ABORIGINAL LEADERS have been given a discreet, mild-mannered but firm warning by the ALP not to treat the possibility of a Beazley Labor government as an invitation to stay their hand on issues now before the Howard government, nor to revisit...

OEUF EN COCOTTE.(Poem)
June 1, 2001... We were talking about our marriages. He was smug and said he believed in monogamy. I raised my eyebrows. I said, would you like some pain-au-chocolat and he made a big fuss, that I should call...

SANCTIFIED SCORN.(anglo-indians)(Critical Essay)
June 1, 2001... A RECENT REPEAT screening of "A Calcutta Christmas" on SBS calls for some light on Anglo-Indians, and on the program itself, which was presented as of "national importance". It would have been of national importance to portray Australian...

POSTCARDS FROM KANAKY.(Poem)
June 1, 2001... We sweat and cry salt water, so we know that the ocean is really in our blood. --Teresia Teaiwa From a long way off, Ouvea, my island, appears like a humpback surfacing, spiked cliffs like the arched spine of a...

CORDLESS IN MEXICO.(Poem)
June 1, 2001... Not a word in six months the cordless phone comes hand to mouth I wonder what on earth to say. Hello Dad Just to let you know I'm in Mexico. The coins are running out, she has to go. I didn't know...

POUL ANDERSON: AN APPRECIATION.
June 1, 2001... SALMAN RUSHDIE has claimed that young authors in Britain can talk about nothing but contemporary English lifestyles. As a comment on the literary establishment this is only too sadly true. But that is not the whole of the story. There are other...

VISIONS OF WAR.(war and Australia portrayed through film)(Critical Essay)
June 1, 2001... With Australians at War on ABC television David Lean's The Bridge on the River Kwai released on DVD, "the war" is alive well on the small screen. For The Bridge on the River Kwai this is a mixed blessing. The DVD does reproduce an approximation...

The Couch.(Short Story)
June 1, 2001... He'd come to the shop three days in a row, a small middle-aged man with vague grey eyes and thick wavy brown hair. Ordinary, wholesome even--like a loaf of bread. Each time he'd select the book, seat himself on the ancient velvet settee and...

Towards the End.(Short Story)
June 1, 2001... He leaned back on the chrome chair, stretched his legs out under the square black table and placed his mobile phone in front of him. He looked over to the counter at the back of the cafe at the cakes and muffins on display and the Italian...

Cucharadita.(Short Story)
June 1, 2001... What are you doing to me, little witch? Why is your silly name spinning inside my head, driving me insane? Do you know how many times I've been to McGill's, trying to get an answer, a simple yes or no? Why are you making fun of me,...

Last Gardens.(Short Story)
June 1, 2001... I needed a break so I checked into a monastery in the hills--a charming, declining place, uncertain of its future. After a day spent walking in a public garden nearby, and reading a vampire novel, I decided to have an early night. How long...

Damaged Men: The Precarious Lives of James McAuley and Harold Stewart.(Review)
June 1, 2001... Damaged Men: The Precarious Lives of James McAuley and Harold Stewart, by Michael Ackland; Allen & Unwin, 2001, $45. IT WAS A VERY odd way to launch a scholarly book. Before this new study of the Ern Malley hoaxers had even been released,...

Building a Bridge to the Eighteenth Century.(Review)
June 1, 2001... Building a Bridge to the Eighteenth Century, by Neil Postman; Scribe Publications(Carlton North, Vic.), 2000, $27.50. OF NEIL POSTMAN'S many books, I suppose the most influential have been his early Teaching as a Subversive Activity (with...

Poets and Others.
June 1, 2001... Poets and Others, by Bruce Beaver; Brandl & Schlesinger, 1999, $16.95. LONG-TIME READERS of Quadrant should find particular interest in one of the poems in Bruce Beaver's fourteenth collection of verse. It is called "Requiem for Richard...

Blue.(Review)
June 1, 2001... Blue, by Jennifer Compton; Indigo, 2000 $18. LONG-TIME READERS of Quadrant should find particular interest in one of the poems in Bruce Beaver's fourteenth collection of verse. It is called "Requiem for Richard (Lewis) Packer", and is one...

A Cretive Life.(Review)
June 1, 2001... A Cretive Life, by Philip Salom; Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2001, $18.95. LONG-TIME READERS of Quadrant should find particular interest in one of the poems in Bruce Beaver's fourteenth collection of verse. It is called "Requiem for...

Untold Lives and Later Poems.
June 1, 2001... Untold Lives and Later Poems, by Rosemary Dobson; Brandl & Schelesinger, 2001, $21.94. LONG-TIME READERS of Quadrant should find particular interest in one of the poems in Bruce Beaver's fourteenth collection of verse. It is called...

The Rights of Desire.(Review)
June 1, 2001... The Rights of Desire, by Andre Brink; Secker & Warburg, 2000, $47.27. WE ARE USED to the idea of heavyweight American novelists indulging in the occasional bout of literary biffo. Some years ago pugnacious Norman Mailer famously came to...

DANGER OF OLD BUILDINGS.(Poem)
June 1, 2001... Old government building. Unable to wait for the lift, I went into the fire escape well back into school in the fifties. Stopped by the smell, where the hell, am I ten or sixty? Undressed wooden stairs as...

THE BOY FROM THE SIR WALTER SCOTT.(remembering Bill Davidson)
June 1, 2001... FACED WITH the morning chore of making the bed, I often think of my father-in-law, Bill Davidson. It is many years since he died in his nineties. Why should his memory still spring so sharply and so frequently to mind at bed-making time in the...