Time on Fire explained

Time on Fire
Author:Thomas Shapcott
Country:Australia
Language:English
Genre:Poetry collection
Publisher:Jacaranda press
Release Date:1961
Media Type:Print
Pages:88 pp
Preceded By:–
Followed By:The Mankind Thing

Time on Fire (1961) is the debut collection of poems by Australian poet Thomas Shapcott. It won the Grace Leven Prize for Poetry in 1961.[1]

The collection includes 61 poems by the author that are reprinted from various sources, although some are published here for the first time.

Contents

  • "Sonnet"
  • "River Scene"
  • "Denmark Hill"
  • "The Fifth of November"
  • "Late Winter, Queensland"
  • "Lake Swans"
  • "At Night, Footsteps"
  • "The Sleeping Trees"
  • "Columbine"
  • "Mt. Flinders"
  • "Hawk"
  • "Water Skier"
  • "Mt. Glorious"
  • "Blue Mountains After Rain"
  • "Virgin Forest, Southern New South Wales"
  • "The Waves"
  • "Beyond My Love"
  • "Time on Fire"
  • "The Finches"
  • "Evergreen"
  • "Skin Diver"
  • "Winter Westerlies"
  • "Autumn Grasses"
  • "White Cedar in Winter"
  • "Idyll"
  • "Dead House in the Hills"
  • "The Lake in Winter"
  • "Rhapsody on the Shortest Day"
  • "Stranger in the City"
  • "Woman in the Bar"
  • "American Sailor in Hyde Park"
  • "Aspect of Truth : A Small City Park"
  • "Suburb"
  • "New Australian in the Park"
  • "At Neutral Bay"
  • "La Glutton, in Suburb"
  • "Lullaby"
  • "Song"
  • "Traditional Song"
  • "Secrecy"
  • "Spring"
  • "Music at Night"
  • "High Tide"
  • "At the Bay"
  • "Lonely Bay"
  • "Beyond Any Bright Dexterity"
  • "Goodbye Message"
  • "Message to London"
  • "Return"
  • "Car Journey"
  • "Reunion (Nocturne)"
  • "Sheep Country in Spring"
  • "In Your Lands
  • "Windy Hill"
  • "Sonnet for an Engagement"
  • "Genesis"
  • "At North Head, Late Spring"
  • "Love Poem Written after Rain"
  • "On the Beach"
  • "Bells (Three extracts from a Marriage Sequence)"
  • "Content"

Critical reception

While reviewing a subsequent volume of poems in The Canberra Times, the critic T. Inglis Moore noted: "In his initial Time on Fire he emerged as a fresh and lively lyricist, with a flexibility of rhythms that reminded one of Dylan Thomas. He tackled urban and rural themes alike with sensitivity and a sharp, reflective intelligence. In his first book and its successors there were, however, certain weaknesses – sometimes the fluidity fell into facility or looseness, the originality into word play for its own sake, the search for meanings into obscurity."[2]

The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature referred to the collection as being "largely autobiographical, reflecting the country boy's distaste for the garish city environment; the wakening of young love; courtship, marriage, parenthood; and a preoccupation with transience."[3]

See also

Notes and References

  1. http://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/C22210 Austlit Time on Fire by Thomas Shapcott
  2. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article106981889 "Disciplined clarity in poet's new work" by T. Inglis Moore, The Canberra Times, 11 November 1967, p13
  3. The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature, 2nd edition, p689

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