Porter's compulsive read.

(From Canberra Times)

DOROTHY PORTER'S fourth verse novel, Wild Surmise, serves to remind us of the virtues of the form - a combination of narrative momentum and textual density. Short poems often have a narrative element but they don't usually build up whatever it is that keeps a reader flipping pages. Conversely, however, if a novel is as dense with imagery as the best short poems the reader will be too much (if pleasurably) impeded to experience this particular sort of excitement. In Wild Surmise Porter has partly solved this classic problem by using an evolving series of metaphors derived from astronomy to illuminate the characters' mental and bodily states. Two …