John Kinsella is the international editor of the Kenyon Review and author of more than 40 books. In Firebreaks, he drops readers into the countryside of Western Australia, bringing lyricism to such mundane tasks as putting in a fence in "Fencing Reversals": "You wouldn't read about it: me putting a fence in/ rather than taking out; but today, that's just/ what I did," he writes. "I can barely hit the hard green keys/ of the priest's old typewriter, fingers so cut,/ scratched, pierced, and punctured."
He can take the energy of thunder and lightning and raise them to new heights, as in "Arc":
the time-rending slash of light,
magnesium-ribbon flare
that blinds in distending
sight into the infinite's
finitude, a slicing apart
of tissue and time, temporal
glitch where thunder and lightning
are one, no one counting down to safety,
as just metres away (imperial
and metric anneal), charged steel
fencepost, groundstar telescoped
to firmament, glistens and crackles.
Writing in multiple poetic formats, Kinsella evokes the ethereal quality of Thoreau while he lived near Walden Pond, but with a definite Aussie flavor all his own, which provides insight into a culture and environment that many may not be familiar with. He examines what it means to call a place home, to observe the landscape through its seasonal cycles, and to leave a homeland and return with fresh eyes that see the familiar in a new light. His work is refreshing, invigorating and well worth reading. --Lee E. Cart, freelance writer and book reviewer