John Tranter (1943–2023)

I confess that with this book and me it was irritation at first sight. What does it mean to publish a 'best of 2007' book in September? A quick look up the back of the book reveals that a couple of its poems were first published in 2005 and the rest in 2006. Ok, that's my first nitpick out of the way. Then I looked at the list of 'Journals Where the Poems First Appeared' (the books is subtitled 'a selection of the best poems from Australia's literary journals'), and was a bit surprised to see that Quadrant didn't get a guernsey. But it turns out that there are poems from that venerable right-wing rag, and from the equally venerable left-wing, though less well funded, rag Overland, which also doesn't rate a mention in that list. And there's more substantial cause for irritation: more than 40 of the book's 120 pages are devoted to commentary: introductory material by and about the guest editor and the series editors, and then notes from the contributing poets about the poems, which reminded me inevitably of William Carlos Williams's remark: 'You should never explain a poem but it sometimes helps nevertheless.' Some of the poets' own commentaries here are witty, some illuminating, but most plain dull, presumably because they'd said what they wanted to say. My massing irritation didn't exactly put me in a mood to enjoy the forty poems, some of which, it turns out, are very good.… (meer)