Book Review: Henry Moss: His Wreath of Song: The Collected Verse of an Early Australian Poet by Stephe Jitts and Keith Campbell. Canberra: Elect Printing, 2020. / Many Such as She: Victorian Australian Women Poets of World War One by Michael Sharkey. Hobart: Walleah Press, 2018. / Elza de Locre: How May I Endure: Selected Poems by John Arnold. Melbourne: Fanfrolico Two, 2019

[...]the earliest oeuvre, regional historian Stephe Jitts and philosopher Keith Campbell have collaborated to produce Henry Moss: His Wreath of Song: The Collected Verse of an Early Australian Poet (2020). In the early 'Beauteous Land: from Carmel's Wreath of Song by one of the scattered s...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature : JASAL Vol. 21; no. 1; pp. 1 - 6
Main Author Gilbey, David
Format Book Review
LanguageEnglish
Published Sydney Association for the Study of Australian Literature (ASAL) 01.01.2021
Subjects
Australian literature
Authorship
Breasts
Fate
Heroism & heroes
Literary devices
Literary influences
Poetry
Poets
Victorian period
Women
Writers
Writing
Australia
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Summary:[...]the earliest oeuvre, regional historian Stephe Jitts and philosopher Keith Campbell have collaborated to produce Henry Moss: His Wreath of Song: The Collected Verse of an Early Australian Poet (2020). In the early 'Beauteous Land: from Carmel's Wreath of Song by one of the scattered sons of Zion' Moss adopts the perspective of an exile (part of his Jewish heritage) to decry that the new land will 'reinthral / 'Neath the cold chain of tyranny and spoil, / The rights and freedom of each native born . . .' The blue wave / Borne on the bosom of the swelling tide / . . . / Bounding in beauty 'neath its haught of pride,' the poet wanders through imagined glades, hills and edifices not so much as Virgil, Milton or Piers Plowman but rather as a coy Victorian Lanval who sees a 'Maiden Queen of Love' in her bowre of blisse. O'er her bosom's height But ill-concealed, beneath its silvery screen, Her swelling breasts seemed bursting into light Like purple peaches 'neath the leaves of green . . . (stanza 28) Stanzas 38 and 39 provide us with an obverse of both Coleridge's 'vast romantic chasm' and Wordsworth's 'elfin pinnace' in 'A huge dark coralline crystal rock, its breast upheaved / Upon whose height, 'neath chain that firm enslaves / A dreadful monster of the deep.'
ISSN:1447-8986