From Publishers Weekly
It is surprising that the voluminous, gregarious Australian poet Kinsella is making his U.S. debut with this collection. His tireless production as editor of Salt Press (a prolific publishing house and international poetry journal based in the U.K.) and multiple volumes of strangely foreboding "post-pastoral" landscape poetry have made Kinsella a name within the Commonwealth, as he has improvised an Australian epic lyric by lyric, book by book, neither "unfolding" like Hart Crane nor "developing" like Wallace Stevens (a dichotomy Harold Bloom erects in his introduction) but moving forward unaggressively yet momentously, like a geological process. Kinsella crosses genres easily, from the accessible parable of "Drowning in Wheat" to the urbane satire of "The Bermuda Triangle," from the deconstructionist archeology of a line like "as we en-DUR{ATION} / measure against our spatial / configuration" to the almost Stevensian "In the reciprocity of summer/ And the year's first frosts, the green eruption/ Hesitant, the stramonious remainder/ Of last season's crops converts to nitrogen..." It is this ability to be a harmless, banjo-playing farmer at one moment and then a cosmopolitan, corrupted Sydney-ite, welcome at any dinner party-that might make Kinsella a little difficult for those who like their poets religiously attached to a form, genre or persona. But this suspicion plays into Kinsella's game; his speaker's persona is that of the trickster. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From Booklist
In a time when many poets have been taught to "find their voice," and subsequently get stuck with that voice, Kinsella shows that variety is not only the spice of life but the stuff of true poetic exploration. Peripheral Light, a collection of new and selected poems, covers a broad range of topics, styles, and forms, from the literal representation of nature to the symbolic and even abstract landscapes within matter and inside ourselves. Kinsella writes lyrics, narratives, and prose with equal confidence, it seems, but always with a striving. He honors the legacy (in his unique way) of poets such as Frost and Stevens, and poignantly ponders how arrivals, departures, and what remains profoundly affect one's life. Though ambitious, this collection does not attempt to turn the act of bearing witness into fact, resolve life's conundrums, or even spotlight the overlooked areas of life. Instead, it shines that delicate, indirect light of searching and discovery--as fine writing, or any fine art, often does. Janet St. John
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Book Description
This landmark publication heralds the long-awaited American debut of one of Australia's best poets."John Kinsella is an Orphic fountain, a prodigy of the imagination...he frequently makes me think of John Ashbery: improbable fecundity, eclecticism, and a stand that fuses populism and elitism in poetic audience....We are poised before the onset of what I prophesy will be a major art."—Harold Bloom, from the introduction


About the Author
John Kinsella has written over twenty volumes of poetry. He teaches at Kenyon College in Ohio.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

This landmark publication heralds the long-awaited American debut of one of Australia's best poets. John Kinsella delves deep into the emotional truths recorded in the undulations of his homeland. He uses the complexity of the natural world as a lens to explore human experience: the rich desperation of survival, the violence of sun and shadow, the blinding force of life that surges through everything around us and reflects our own sense of futility, fear, and occasional acceptance. All of this he accomplishes in a whisper -- the divergent mysteries of night, among them loneliness and independence, are almost deciphered by the black twisting of tree branches. With effusive, rhythmic language these poems draw you in tight and slow, showing internal and external landscapes, finding a beauty even in the spoiled.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly