Manners of an astronaut By Gig Ryan

Manners of an astronaut book review

Manners of an Astronaut was Gig Ryan s second collection in 1984 and confirmed the impression she had made with her first book It has been unavailable for some time although parts have reappeared in her New Selected Poems Bloodaxe and Sydney s Giramondo As Martin Johnston said in a blurb for the first it marks something new in Australian a deeply coherent discontinuous narrative in verse of hallucinatory vividness and continual wry wit lacerating without self pity demanding without pretentiousness or condescension No one will find it comfortable reading Ryan s craftsmanship is impeccable her vision bullshit proof Gig Ryan develops and extends the strengths of her first collection The Division of Anger Like that book Manners of an Astronaut is full of verbal energy She doesn t give up the concerns her first book was a direct combative response to Instead of using the language of feeling she explores its discontinuities is makes her work poignant and sophisticated John Forbes Scripsi magazine Manners of an astronautPerhaps my rating of this book is a little unfair as generally speaking I m not a massive poetry fan Nevertheless I really struggled to read this book I found the poems abstract nonsensical and to be perfectly honest really quite repetitive The poems are mainly about everyday life focussing on themes such as relationships and general busyness They were too mundane to get me excited and even when it came to poems that would ordinarily excite me such as Various Wars which was written for Herodotus the writing simply failed to engage me In this particular poem the poet uses everyday metaphors to relate to Herodotus famous Histories e. Manners of an astronaut book review g obsessed with pulling tablecloths off quickly arguably relates to Herodotus habit of revealing brutal truths Yet the lack of scale in poems such as this simply left me feeling disappointed honestly if you re going to talk about epic works derived from the ancient world you shouldn t really be talking about tablecloths. Manners of an astronautu definition Again perhaps my disregard of this book is a little unfair because it s really not a genre that I would ordinarily read but let me just say this until recently this book has been out of print Perhaps there s a reason for this English