When placed on a page by John Holland, yes.
The use of pauses makes this book read like it’s breathing.
Breathe along and:
- Experience the Australian Outback from a saddle.
- Follow an unflinching eye into the shadowed corners of our world.
- Witness the characters who dwell there.
- Feel pride in honest work we pretend doesn’t exist.
- Sweat out a Queensland summer.
- Fly fish in the:
iridescent blue of tropical shallows
From Blue Dreaming, Holland, John (2012-11-20). Dry Bones (Kindle Locations 229-231). Stonesthrow Poetry / Lazarus Media LLC. Kindle Edition.
- Walk away from this book not only knowing more about Australia but unable to see your own world in the same way.
- Come back again and again to check how it mirrors and extends your experience.
Book:
Dry Bones
Author website:
http://poetrysansfrontieres.weebly.com/
***** SPOILER ALERT*****
A gracious man as well as talented poet, Mr. Holland supplied these answers to my questions.
General question: In your bio, it says you’ve worked as a stockman. Is that the same thing as a cowboy?
* Yes.
Points of clarification about some of the poems:
Tea and Sugar
* Tea and Sugar is very Australian. Some early settlers in the north poisoned tea to exterminate large groups of aboriginals. The tea was heavily sugared to mask the taste. Captain Bradshaw was an early settler who set up a huge cattle station. There is no indication that he was involved in such practices though. I used his name because his grave was on one of the cattle stations (ranches) I lived on as a child. There was also a massacre location we children were forbidden to go near.
Now You See Her
* The man in the poem is seeing visions of a woman. He is alone at a campfire and the light reflected from rocks is playing tricks on his mind.
Coming Apart
* Falling apart. Losing control and vanishing into one’s own mind.
China Doll
* He is a Vietnam Vet. Scarred by his experiences. She is a woman he knew in Saigon.
Chewing Sugar Cane
* There are two reasons for using the term Mango Madness. One is there is a drink called that. The other is a reference to the “madness” that affects people in the tropics during very hot and wet summers.
Breaking Even
* The pig’s blood is just to signify that Satanists might get up to all sorts of bad things. The reader can supply their own particular demons.
Afterwards
* Written about the day after Cyclone Yasi came through Townsville.
Dry Bones
* Some aboriginal tribes gather the dried bones of their dead and chew white ochre and spit it out all over the bones. The bones are then placed in a hollow tree or a cave. In the end that’s all there is to life and death.
Dancing in the Dirt
* Love that wasn’t meant to be, but happened anyway. Now she is back crying in other man’s alley.
Remembering
* The dark we emerge from. The dark we return to.
Tracks
* It is about a drug addicted woman. What she will do to satisfy her craving and how the innocent might be injured by it.
All Through the Long Day
* Days can seem forever in the saddle. That gives you too much time to think about where you are, where you’ve been and where you are going to.
Nicci Carrera 