AustLit

'Part unauthorized biography, part Miltonic character study, and part examination of what it is that makes us hominids of the sapiens order tick, the first section of Petra White's new collection, Reading for a Quiet Morning, casts an oracular, topological gaze across a place of outposts imagining themselves toward stabilities. In "How the Temple Was Built," the poet imagines a milieu of flat domains propped up by "handmade gods / vivid as puppets held up to the burning sun" (4) and acutely understands metaphysics as an ur-discourse straightening mayhem into particular directions...' (Introduction)