Knute Skinner: Four Poems
Self-Assessment at Eighty
(After reading Peter Ackroyd’s Shakespeare: The Biography)
I spend the morning writing a poem. Perhaps it will go into a book. My
latest, Fifty Years: Poems 1957–2007, has had welcome reviews.
In the afternoon I file my statements from Fiserv. My investments from
retirement income are doing all right.
Shakespeare, in the closing years of his life, at the height of his fame, was
semi-retired from the theatre but writing King Lear.
He had purchased New Place and had recently invested in tithes.
He was wealthier, by the standards of his day, than I am now.
His achievements, then as now, were beyond compare.
My advantage is that I am still over ground.
Knute Skinner
Boyhood Paths
One aimless Saturday we lost ourselves,
Dick and I, in a wood,
an overgrown path between hostile trees
failing…
Madam: Archbishop Fisher (July-August 2024) does not resist the attacks on his church by the political, social or scientific atheists and those who insist on not being told what to do.
Aug 29 2024
6 mins
To claim Aborigines have the world's oldest continuous culture is to misunderstand the meaning of culture, which continuously changes over time and location. For a culture not to change over time would be a reproach and certainly not a cause for celebration, for it would indicate that there had been no capacity to adapt. Clearly this has not been the case
Aug 20 2024
23 mins
A friend and longtime supporter of Quadrant, Clive James sent us a poem in 2010, which we published in our December issue. Like the Taronga Park Aquarium he recalls in its 'mocked-up sandstone cave' it's not to be forgotten
Aug 16 2024
2 mins