Quadrant articles from October 2006

Quadrant archives from October 2006

Fifty years of quadrant.(Editorial)
October 1, 2006... THIS MONTH we celebrate the fiftieth year of publication of Quadrant, whose first editor was the distinguished poet and intellectual James McAuley. Its joint founder was Richard Krygier, whose experience of Central Europe under communism had...

Mao's battle with freedom.(Asia)(Mao Zedong)(Biography)
October 1, 2006... IN THE EARLY 1990S, according to a story told by many Chinese taxi drivers, an eight-car traffic accident in Guangzhou resulted in injuries to seven of the drivers involved; the eighth, unscathed, had a Mao portrait attached to his windshield...

The Things She Says.(Poem)
October 1, 2006... THE THINGS SHE SAYS My business partner's run away. My teenage girlfriend says she's gay. She doesn't know. She isn't sure. She wants more butter for her bread. She says if she were happy poor She would have been...

Captain W.E. Johns Rallies Us in the Dark Days of War.(Poem)
October 1, 2006... CAPTAIN W.E. JOHNS RALLIES US IN THE DARK DAYS OF WAR We'll beat the Huns, Said Captain Johns. You know the chap, The Biggles chap. Remember how We beat them once. They had the guns, They had the men,...

Go Mouse.(Poem)
October 1, 2006... GO MOUSE Go hunt for honey in his hair, Go smell the cheese that isn't there, Most sweet and estimable mouse, Most sweet and estimable mouse. Go map the mirrors of his mind, Go seek what isn't there to find, ...

James McAauley and the New Dunciad.(In memoriam)
October 1, 2006... ONE OF THE FIRST things that struck you about Jim McAuley was his sense of fun. The world remembers him as poet, critic and editor. He was indeed a serious poet--tragic, sentimentalisch. But he was a very funny man too. Only a great humorist...

Religious faith and political action.
October 1, 2006... THE PUBLICATION of a new edition of The Heart of James McAuley testifies to the continuing significance of our foremost poet/advocate and also to the lasting quality of this 1980 essay. The writer is a former member for Wentworth in the...

The essential alliance.(Defence)
October 1, 2006... SINCE THE MIDDLE of the twentieth century, the Australian-American Alliance, based upon shared cultural values, national interest and a tradition of friendship, has been part of the framework of Australian politics. Although the emphasis and...

On Accepting an Invitation to Read.(Poem)
October 1, 2006... ON ACCEPTING AN INVITATION TO READ I love to hear the words at work and savoured in the mouth, these borrowed consonants and vowels, the ones that I have turned and burnished and set into their forms. I like the...

The Monks.(Poem)
October 1, 2006... THE MONKS It must have been like a radiance that could hardly have been borne: the sudden and naked possibility that there might be a life that was free of blood's hopeless compulsions. I am not meaning those...

The Fisher King and the Siege Perilous.(Politics)
October 1, 2006... DURING TIMES of relative prosperity and stable government, things become particularly difficult for political reporters. They have virtually nothing to write about. The solution they apply to this problem--and we have seen a good deal of it...

Real hard times.(David Potts Great Depression )
October 1, 2006... DAVID POTTS has presented us with a significant and most readable book on the Great Depression (The Myth of the Great Depression, Scribe). Of course, the Depression is not a myth, but the overall story as to what actually happened, and to whom,...

Commonsense history.
October 1, 2006... WHAT A GOOD, if overdue, idea: judging history by its content of common sense and context rather than Left, Right, postmodern and so on and on. The effect, judging by John Hirst's Sense and Nonsense in Australian History, is to make most recent...

Oh.(Poem)
October 1, 2006... OH he moved around the circle taking our hands, and I, like everyone else, offered him mine. His scented self was unsparing as he closed the route. Oh gregarious me, why was I part of that oneness? ...

Old Robe Road.(Poem)
October 1, 2006... OLD ROBE ROAD Limestone country breeds generations of sand. Porous paddocks stretch flat to the horizon pocked with stone and wood stooks. Sheep keep bleached-bone grass crew cut and spiked. ...

D.N.F.(Poem)
October 1, 2006... D. N. F. Forget your ex-wife's sugar daddy's name. Forget his piggy eyes and pasty face. Forget the night Croatian heavies came With baseball bats and bombs to trash the place. Your chattels now scarce fill a...

The Househusband Away on Poetry Business.(Poem)
October 1, 2006... THE HOUSEHUSBAND AWAY ON POETRY BUSINESS It's the first morning off for an age, With no one to please but my shadow: I could watch a pink morning uncage And smoke a cigar at the window, Be that middle-aged poet at...

On the record: the National Archives of Australia.
October 1, 2006... THE ANNUAL RELEASE of thirty-year-old cabinet papers on New Year's Day causes some excitement, and brings the work of the National Archives of Australia into public focus. Though the content of the documents may be controversial, collecting...

Cloning by any other name.(Bioethics)(Personal account)
October 1, 2006... IMAGINE THIS. Three of your children are suffering from a lifelong and life-threatening illness. This disease can't be cured, it is progressive and although it is managed, it affects your whole family to the point where daily life, even the...

Faith, conflict and society: a Jewish perspective.
October 1, 2006... ALL FAITHS have their fundamentalists; people who decline to engage inclusively with modernity. And faiths, more than cultures, have the capacity to be insular. In assessing any faith or culture as contributing to conflict in our society,...

His people.(Poem)
October 1, 2006... HIS PEOPLE There was something in the set of his head, the Nefertiti curve of his skull, as his fingers, bulb-knuckled, long-boned, rolled sweet tobacco in fine white paper. His hooded eyes hooked distance, ...

A private place.(Poem)
October 1, 2006... A PRIVATE PLACE It had been long expected yet came as a surprise. When she died she died quickly. She'd always been uncomfortable making a scene, embarrassed to the point of paralysis. Her bulk...

Remnants of home.(Poem)
October 1, 2006... REMNANTS OF HOME Wherever he dug, old wine corks and fragments of willow pattern popped to the surface, but he persisted. He made a vegetable garden. As the sun cast long shadows, he crawled along the rows, ...

A conversation with Geoffrey Blainey.(Interview)
October 1, 2006... GEOFFREY BLAINEY is considered by many to be Australia's greatest historian. Few quarrel with the view of him as the finest literary stylist (and one of the most prolific writers) among historians. In 1984 Blainey raised doubts, during a...

Just Like That.(Poem)
October 1, 2006... JUST LIKE THAT the great cloud lifted from my cloggy ghost. I swear I could see it. It hovered a moment at the plaster over my head; then, sidling, it made its way toward the open door; finally, as if...

The Bachelor's Account of Himself.(Poem)
October 1, 2006... THE BACHELOR'S ACCOUNT OF HIMSELF One pursued me by day, the other by night. If each had had her way, I'd be boxed-up tight. For each one wanted all I had to give, and I couldn't give all to each ...

Spelling Lesson.(Poem)
October 1, 2006... SPELLING LESSON bs and ds were tangled like spaghetti in his head. His hand didn't understand the difference. So his teacher slid the tip of his wooden ruler down the nape of his neck. The straight-backed...

The enduring deception of Francisco Goya.(Art)
October 1, 2006... SHAKESPEARE WAS WILLING and able wondrously to dissemble and embellish the Tudors' ascent to the throne, but later generations saw through the splendidly lettered curtain, and now we know otherwise. We have also seen through Jacques Louis...

Possession.(Poem)
October 1, 2006... POSSESSION The Australian rock barnacle, hermit, hermaphrodite and stolid crustacean (sub-class Cirripedia, "feather-footed"), passes its whole life folded within a shell of bony plates clamped to a...

The Trial.(Poem)
October 1, 2006... THE TRIAL On days of leaden skies when you are being driven to meet your grown-up kids you can be overcome by a rising sense of dread, a little like the fear that seeps out of a criminal on his way to...

Useful lessons from California.(Universities)
October 1, 2006... RECENT YEARS have seen intense discussion of what Australian universities should be like. Most people seem to believe that changes are needed, but do not agree on what should be done. Here I offer suggestions from the perspective of someone who...

Stag.(Poem)
October 1, 2006... STAG Wisest of stags, he was A bark-stripper, forest-glider, A perfect shot would take him, But he ghosted you, peered through criss-crossing fir, Aware, despite hectares of thicket, Of your muffled start and...

Lakes.(Poem)
October 1, 2006... LAKES Crystal is natural to a lake in early morning, when the eye can pierce its clean skin clear through to the decoration of antic weed and static shingle-a world that shines like olden days, and belies...

Soap and water.(Poem)
October 1, 2006... SOAP AND WATER My grandfather washed his hands in a tin bucket in the yard the water milky with Palmolive soap dried them on a hard scrap of towel hanging on a nail outside the shed which could not be opened ...

Walking on thin ice.(First Person)(polish-jews relations)(Personal account)
October 1, 2006... MY SEVENTH TRIP to Poland brought, as always, both pleasure and pain. As a child of a Jewish-Catholic marriage I tried to understand why in this beautiful country of my birth, there were forces of evil which struck out, often without warning,...

Happy Flamenco.(Poem)
October 1, 2006... HAPPY FLAMENCO Don't tell me when to be happy. I'm losing my mind. No loss, you say, because outside oranges ripen in the cold, to make bitter marmalade. I pray I'll be put back together in a larger way. ...

John Manifold's fife and boots.(Literature)(Poem)
October 1, 2006... FIFE TUNE For Sixth Platoon, 308th I. T.C. One morning in spring We marched from Devizes All shapes and all sizes Like beads on a string, But yet with a swing We trod the bluemetal And full of high...

Caress.(Poem)
October 1, 2006... CARESS As one gorilla might caress another with the back of its hand --just so the excavator gently nudges the brick wall...

Colour.(Poem)
October 1, 2006... COLOUR A smoky colour, the sort of colour you might puff at bees before robbing their hive of honey-the white daisy's underside.

Hang the poets.
October 1, 2006... ONE DRIZZLY Saturday afternoon in May, a group of about fifteen poets and their friends gathered to read poems outside the front doors of the National Gallery of Victoria in Federation Square, Melbourne. Poetry has always found itself outside...

Poetry General, A-Z By Subject, Waterstones, Piccadilly.
October 1, 2006... POETRY GENERAL, A-Z BY SUBJECT, WATERSTONES, PICCADILLY These, then, are topics fit for poets. Botanical (daffodils, red roses et cetera). Cats (of course, curled on the writer's lap Or amusingly tickling the computer...

October.(Poem)
October 1, 2006... OCTOBER When did October come? When I wasn't looking and suddenly. For me, late in the day But far too soon for some. What did October wear? Her oaks were drab and brown. Her scarf the Milky Way But...

The Doves of Verdun.(Poem)
October 1, 2006... THE DOVES OF VERDUN after Franz Marc Their wingbones are rifles, their feathers bayonets. They carry grenade pins instead of twigs in their beaks. Their nests are explosions of shrapnel and fuse wire. ...

Dispatch Rider.(Poem)
October 1, 2006... DISPATCH RIDER after Franz Marc I ride a tower of blue horses like a stained-glass window, our haunches hard as lead crystal. The sun shines through us onto the battlefield, our veins reflecting as mountain...

The Trees Show Their Rings, the Animals Their Veins.(Poem)
October 1, 2006... THE TREES SHOW THEIR RINGS, THE ANIMALS THEIR VEINS after Franz Marc That clear night, I saw a new kind of painting on a great black canvas. The moon hung low as if conducting a colour symphony. The animals...

Atlas Moth.(Poem)
October 1, 2006... ATLAS MOTH This giant atlas moth's broad wings could be the map of China. Here are two Great Walls. And there on the Manchurian tip of each forewing, are dragon heads to scare off predators. But what are...

The best president America never had.(Film)(The West Wing)
October 1, 2006... PRESIDENT: "Are you suggesting we use the deaths of our people as a pretext to bomb a country we just don't happen to like... I am not going to bomb half the Middle East to make us all feel better." A newly discovered tape from the Carter...

Clean up.(medieval dungeons)(Personal account)
October 1, 2006... "The McNorries, by the time my great-grandfather bought this pile from them, had become proper Victorians. Ashamed of their ancestors' habits. Dropping people into a hole and leaving them to die. After the McNorries became respectable the...

Goodbye to all that: the avant-garde at twilight.(Creme de la Phlegm: Unforgettable Australian Reviews )(Book review)
October 1, 2006... THIS IS HOW Angela Bennie ends her long (64 pages) review of reviewers: Are these Australian critics Rebecca West's fearless warriors carrying out their harsh duty against the conventions of pleasantness and the dull vice of amiability? Or...

The paradox that is language.(Read It Again)(Book review)
October 1, 2006... Read It Again, by Chris Wallace-Crabbe; Salt Publishing, 2005, $45. IN HIS 1975 BOOK Chinese Theories of Literature, James J.Y. Liu draws a very interesting parallel between Mallarme and the third-century BC Daoist philosopher Zhuang Zi....

Writers can be fun.(The New Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes)(Book review)
October 1, 2006... The New Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes, edited by John Gross; OUP, 2006, $55. I KNEW WE WERE IN TROUBLE here right from the introduction. Editor John Gross acknowledges that the anecdote "ideally" describes the unfolding of a short,...

Filling the gaps on the maps.(Encyclopedia of Exploration, 1850 to 1940: The Oceans, Islands and Polar Regions)(Book review)
October 1, 2006... Encyclopedia of Exploration, 1850 to 1940: The Oceans, Islands and Polar Regions, by Raymond John Howgego; Hordern House Rare Books, 2006, $245. WITH ALMOST bewildering speed, the third volume of Raymond Howgego's Encyclopedia of...

The writing life.(Wild Amazement)(Book review)
October 1, 2006... Wild Amazement, by Michael Wilding; Central Queensland University Press, 2006, $25.95. I HAD THE MISFORTUNE to be in Melbourne in the 1960s and early 1970s, when I was thinking of abandoning my academic career to take a chance on writing...

Officers of the state.(The Administration of New South Wales, 1901-1960, vol. 2)(Book review)
October 1, 2006... Humble and Obedient Servants." The Administration of New South Wales, Volume II, 1901-1960, by Peter J. Tyler; State Records of New South Wales in conjunction with UNSW Press, 2006, $59.95. FOLLOWING CLOSELY on the heels of Hilary Golder's...

Prats in the ranks.(The Education of a Young Liberal)(Book review)
October 1, 2006... The Education of a Young Liberal, by John Hyde Page; Melbourne University Publishing, 2006, $32.95. POSH KID is playing shoot-em-up game at posh school. Posh Kid runs into group of other drunk, smoking, cross-dressing, slightly older posh...

Is the uncivil war over?(Ryan)(Australian history)(Column)
October 1, 2006... And Robbie, please give me your hand-- Is this the end or beginning? How shall I understand? --John Betjeman "The Arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel" AS THE INTREPID History Summiteers made their gingerly descent from the...