Fruitful Contradictions

Launceston poet Tim Thorne, who died on September 16 at seventy-seven, had a long and various career, starting with Tense, Mood and Voice in 1969 and finishing with this strange but highly entertaining chapbook, Little Pataphysics. Along the way he was associated with a number of divergent tendencies, from the New Poetry of Robert Adamson to his later, fiercely Juvenalian, satires on Australian politics and culture—written from a standpoint well to the left of this magazine.

Importantly, Thorne retained an interest in traditional forms and the contemporary uses to which they might be put. His sense of humour was also a constant. Both characteristics prevail in what we must assume will be Thorne’s valedictory collection.

It is interesting, also, to see that Thorne, whose moral and political compass was normally well-developed, has based this last book almost arbitrarily around two seemingly contradictory figures—the French symbolist and absurdist writer Alfred Jarry…