Though such irony is not the book’s dominant tone it serves to remind us that O’Brien is not a poet who takes himself too seriously. Humour is a welcome and recurrent element, reminiscent perhaps of the “comic relief” in Macbeth’s “porter” scene.

As successive small Australian poetry publishers -- has there ever been any other kind? -- go out of business, new ones spring up to replace them. Four new volumes of Australian verse testify that such optimism, so often and ultimately dashed, can and does produce works of lasting worth

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