
Heart Print
John Tranter(Author)
Salt Publishing
Published on 1. September 2001
Book
Paperback/Softback
116 pages
978-1-876857-32-5 (ISBN)
Description
A fresh collection of energetic and engaging writing. These poems focus sharply on the contemporary world, from the political to the religious, from the public arena to the deeply personal, from "The aggression of foreign companies ... the survival of the most / bastardly is built into the system" to "Parents were templates, / but I could not plot the father ... The tractor did its work like any rusty mechanism / and his office was the open air, a church of absence." As well as twenty-five new poems, Heart Print also brings into print over fifty pages of strong, early writing not previously published outside Australia.
From the US Publishers Weekly, March 18, 2002: "Tranter may now be Australia's most important poet. Since the late '60s, Tranter's cosmopolitan, oddball verse, inspired by John Ashbery and others, has offered a post-modern, hip, slippery challenge to the better-known rural poetics of Les Murray. During the 1990s, Tranter emerged as an international figure, first by editing well-received anthologies, then with the Internet journal Jacket. [...] The untitled set of 28 sonnets and delightful prose poem that conclude [Heart Print] present light-fingered commentary on subjects from "Starlight" to absinthe and middle age: "I re-live youth asleep," one affecting line admits, "and leave it behind at dawn." Readers [...] will see why Tranter has mattered to Australians for so long."
John Tranter is an important writer in mid-career. He has published twenty books, including Gasoline Kisses (Equipage, Cambridge, 1997) Late Night Radio (Polygon, Edinburgh 1998), Different Hands, a collection of seven computer-assisted prose pieces (Folio/Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1998), The Floor of Heaven, a sequence of four interlinked narrative poems (Arc, 2001), and four anthologies of other writers' work including (with Philip Mead) the 474-page Bloodaxe Book of Modern Australian Poetry.
He is the publisher and editor of the widely-read Internet literary magazine Jacket, at http://jacketmagazine.com/
From the US Publishers Weekly, March 18, 2002: "Tranter may now be Australia's most important poet. Since the late '60s, Tranter's cosmopolitan, oddball verse, inspired by John Ashbery and others, has offered a post-modern, hip, slippery challenge to the better-known rural poetics of Les Murray. During the 1990s, Tranter emerged as an international figure, first by editing well-received anthologies, then with the Internet journal Jacket. [...] The untitled set of 28 sonnets and delightful prose poem that conclude [Heart Print] present light-fingered commentary on subjects from "Starlight" to absinthe and middle age: "I re-live youth asleep," one affecting line admits, "and leave it behind at dawn." Readers [...] will see why Tranter has mattered to Australians for so long."
John Tranter is an important writer in mid-career. He has published twenty books, including Gasoline Kisses (Equipage, Cambridge, 1997) Late Night Radio (Polygon, Edinburgh 1998), Different Hands, a collection of seven computer-assisted prose pieces (Folio/Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1998), The Floor of Heaven, a sequence of four interlinked narrative poems (Arc, 2001), and four anthologies of other writers' work including (with Philip Mead) the 474-page Bloodaxe Book of Modern Australian Poetry.
He is the publisher and editor of the widely-read Internet literary magazine Jacket, at http://jacketmagazine.com/
Reviews / Votes
Tranter may now be Australia's most important poet. Since the late '60s, Tranter's cosmopolitan, oddball verse, inspired by John Ashbery and others, has offered a postmodern, hip, slippery challenge to the better-known rural poetics of Les Murray. * Publishers Weekly * `Laugh at death': throughout Heart Print, the poet tries to remind himself that `it's time for fun,' time to `get a drink,' and enjoy the summer day in Sydney or elsewhere. But death looms large in this, Tranter's fourteenth collection of poems, in which camped-up verse forms like the sestina, sonnet, and ballad, or generative devices like the subsequent letters of the alphabet that control the poems in `The Alphabet Murders,' cannot quite contain the disorder of living. -- Marjorie PerloffMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Applecross, WA
Australia
Illustrations
Not illustrated
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 140 mm
Thickness: 7 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-876857-32-5 (9781876857325)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
John Tranter is a leading Australian poet. He has been employed mainly in publishing, teaching and radio production, and has travelled widely, making reading tours to more than forty venues in the USA, England and Europe. He has lived in London and Singapore, and now lives in Sydney.
Content
Lavender ink
Black Leather
Coffee
Country Matters
Gallery
Globe
Halogen
Limbo
Locket
Lookup Table
Men's Talk
Miss Proust
My Story
Off radar
On the Road
Package Tour
Per Ardua ad Astra
Pyramid
Serial Numbers
Sfumato
Songlines
South Farm
Under the Trees
Vista
Whitecaps
The Alphabet Murders
Starlight
after American Graffiti
The Bus
The Chicago `Manual of Style'
Pickup Truck
Barnstorm
Landscape with Automobile
The Training Manual
Art
Artefact
The Moated Grange
The Lessons
A Hard Art
Ballistics
The Museum
I Know a Man Who Lives in the Dark
The Doll
Telescopic Sight
The Spy
Passport
The Painting of the Whole Sky
Absinthe
The Soto Zen School
The Rhetoric of Fiction
The Blues
1968
By the Pool
At the Laundromat
The Beach
Notes
Black Leather
Coffee
Country Matters
Gallery
Globe
Halogen
Limbo
Locket
Lookup Table
Men's Talk
Miss Proust
My Story
Off radar
On the Road
Package Tour
Per Ardua ad Astra
Pyramid
Serial Numbers
Sfumato
Songlines
South Farm
Under the Trees
Vista
Whitecaps
The Alphabet Murders
Starlight
after American Graffiti
The Bus
The Chicago `Manual of Style'
Pickup Truck
Barnstorm
Landscape with Automobile
The Training Manual
Art
Artefact
The Moated Grange
The Lessons
A Hard Art
Ballistics
The Museum
I Know a Man Who Lives in the Dark
The Doll
Telescopic Sight
The Spy
Passport
The Painting of the Whole Sky
Absinthe
The Soto Zen School
The Rhetoric of Fiction
The Blues
1968
By the Pool
At the Laundromat
The Beach
Notes