clothes and tosses her halo “like a frisbee”, or even in the anger at death in “the desperation poem” “Moloch muse!/I suppose you also demand a poem”, or the drama queen of the full moon, “star troupe in train”. This works best when mingling with the profound as in the final poem “backyard cosmos” where the poet paddles in her swimming pool where stars have fallen: “Better plunge up to my neck in it,/paddle off in the cosmic soup, whisking up galaxies,/keeping my head above water.” The Haiku are simple, as Haiku are, and set around the seasons, but still yielding the magic moment of shared understanding. There are a few rare poems which work less well: “voyager”, “song for Lucy” and “threefold”, where the imagery is still rich, but perhaps too personal to make the transition to profound. However, overall this is a wonderful little book, full of poetry to make you shiver; poetry which keeps revealing more on the re-reading, which combines freshness with intensity. Something rare. In Loftus' words:
Lovers and others take note:
there is absolutely nothing
to be deduced from any of this;
no pie-in-the-sky.
No soothsaying, no wisdom.
The copyright of the article The Space between Memory and Hope: Robin Loftus' Backyard Cosmos in Australian Literature is owned by Maggie Ball. Permission to republish The Space between Memory and Hope: Robin Loftus' Backyard Cosmos in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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