"Jigsaw, Poems and Prose Poems"
by Gary Catalano
(Paper Bark Press/Craftsman House)

Gary Catalano makes the most ordinary sights and sounds  extraordinary. In "Wholemeal Loaf," he compares "even the  lightest loaf" to "a lump of masonry from a demolition site." In "Ars Poetica," he evokes

"the soft, descending

'Shh' that these leaves make
when they come to sense
the wind's presence
in a nearby tree."

Gary Catalano expresses experiences we have all had in a way  that unites his reading audience as one. In "Souvenir," a lovely short poem, he states:

"I would have preferred to come back
with something a bit more
substantial than this

but seeing it's such
an odd shape for a stone
I had to pick it up

and have always kept it
here, on the window sill,
next to my desk."

His prose poems are thought-provoking. He recalls the past in  such delicate detail, but in such a way as not to provoke the  least doubt of his veracity in the reader. In "Calendar," he recalls both an experience and his thoughts at that time:

"...I gaze at the calendar and simulatneously swing my bare feet so that they make a dry sandpapery sound as they scrape across the lino. And with every swing I ask myself what name I should cry out when I turn at the sound of the unoiled hinges
and find her standing in the door."

As a well-known Australian art historian and critic, Gary Catalano's vision and voice leads us into a world of his own delicate creation. He is an important voice in International, as well as Australian, poetry.

"Steel Umbrellas"
by David Hunter Sutherland
(Archer Books)

David Hunter Sutherland's poetry is both elegant and erudite.  His vision gives reality an appeal and a grounding which brings both the legendary and the common-place home to the reader. He makes a much-discussed future real in a fantastic manner to us in "The Second Coming."

In "Gaussian Space," we hear some of Sutherland's more simple lyricism when he states that we
"...Hold nature, distributed like stars,
In the palm of our face."

His wisdom is palpable in "Sans Falcon," when he tells us that

"...There will be moments of clarity,
Ineffable beauty, exceeding singularity,

This is withdrawal, naked loss, grief, solace, pain
But mostly . . .
There will be moments of silence,
The slow kick and roll of tumblers through empty stretch,
When like a newborn's grasp on thumb
We must learn to hold and release,
Hold and release."

David Hunter Sutherland is one of the "new wave" of poets  emerging from the Internet into the print media and his "arrival" is source of gratification to all of us here on the Internet.

Mary Barnet