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'Alex Leefson is astronomy's glamour girl, in love with the satellite Europa and the equally unreachable Phoebe. Meanwhile, her husband Daniel mourns the demise of his marriage and his life. Full of Dorothy Porter's customary bite and sensuality, Wild Surmise is an engrossing duet between two passionately estranged voices. An intensely moving verse novel of passions and vulnerabilities, love and death.' (Publication summary)
Adaptations
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Wild Surmise
2012
single work
drama
'Alex searches for life on a distant moon; Daniel begs an answer of the poets they cannot provide. And while attentions are elsewhere, a marriage melts into memory. Dorothy Porter's verse novel shifts from the vastness of space to the minute gaps between us.
'Love may come undone, but like light from a long-dead star its radiance can continue to move us. The late Porter is such a light, still illuminating Australia's literary landscape. Wild Surmise is a conversation, and it is its maker's inimitable voice ringing out among the many, both real and imagined, that chorus in this evocative work.'
Source: Malthouse Theatre website, http://www.malthousetheatre.com.au
Sighted: 15/10/2012
Notes
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A novel in verse form.
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Dedication: For Andy
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Epigraph: 'There felt I like some watcher of the skies, When a new planet swims into his ken; or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes, he stared at the Pacific - and all his men loo'd at each other with a wild surmise -' - 'On First Looking into Chapman's Homer.' John Keats
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Epigraph: 'Behold now, standing before you, the man who has pierced the air and penetrated the sky, wended his way amongst the stars and overpassed the margins of the world. - 'La Cena de le Ceneri.' Giordano Bruni (1548-1600).
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Also braille, sound recording.
Works about this Work
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Australia in Three Books
2018
single work
column
— Appears in: Meanjin , Autumn vol. 77 no. 1 2018; (p. 24-26)'I’ve been thinking about Beverley Farmer’s beautiful, aching book The Seal Woman again recently because I spent some time last year on the surf coast of Victoria, alone in a house on a hill above a beach, red-rocked and windy and wild—the same kind of landscape that Dagmar, the book’s protagonist, inhabits. Dagmar is Danish, but has returned to Australia, to the coastal town where she spent her honeymoon 20 years ago, to mourn her husband, who was killed recently in a shipping accident in the North Sea. Dagmar is housesitting for the friends they both met there, staying in the house alone, adjusting to life alone, walking on the beach and cooking simple meals and reading, and grieving, all the time grieving.' (Introduction)
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‘Incomprehensible Wonder’ : Elegiac Expression in Dorothy Porter’s Wild Surmise
2016
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 16 no. 2 2016; 'This article contends that Dorothy Porter’s verse novel Wild Surmise (2002) is a postmodern elegiac work, which explores the role of unfulfilled desire and mourning. It is through Porter’s paralleled exploration of the ‘incomprehensible wonder’ offered by outer space, alongside the familiarities of domestic life that allow Wild Surmise to explore the grief attached to desire and loss. In order to read Wild Surmise as an elegiac work this paper will predominantly draw from studies of modern and postmodern Anglophone elegies. This approach will allow for a literary-historical account for how the elegiac mode stems from the elegy genre and will reveal how a discussion of elegy conventions may expand upon an understanding of the elegiac mode. This paper is informed by the scholarship of Jahan Ramazani (1994), Karen E. Smythe (1992), David Kennedy (2007) and Tammy Clewell (2009), specifically in relation to their writing of the politics of mourning and consolation within elegiac works. Accordingly, Wild Surmise will be interpreted as a postmodern elegiac work due the ways in which desire, mourning and consolation are depicted throughout the verse novel.' (Publication abstract) -
A Glorious Dot in the Universe
2012
single work
prose
— Appears in: The Saturday Age , 3 November 2012; (p. 20-21) -
A Pint-Sized Cliff Hardy: Dorothy Porter and the Niche Marketing of Australia
2004
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Antipodes , December vol. 18 no. 2 2004; (p. 105-112) -
Historic Win is Poetic Justice for Writer
2004
single work
column
— Appears in: The Advertiser , 1 March 2004; (p. 7)
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Inner Sanctum
2003
single work
review
— Appears in: The Bulletin , 4 February vol. 121 no. [6358] 2003; (p. 75)
— Review of Wild Surmise 2002 single work novel -
Planetary Influences
2002
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Women's Book Review , vol. 14 no. 2 2002;
— Review of Wild Surmise 2002 single work novel -
[Review] Wild Surmise
2003
single work
review
— Appears in: Aurealis : Australian Fantasy & Science Fiction , no. 31 2003; (p. 142-143)
— Review of Wild Surmise 2002 single work novel -
Always Disappearing
2003
single work
review
— Appears in: Westerly , November vol. 48 no. 2003; (p. 74-84)
— Review of Mangroves 2003 selected work poetry ; Collected Poems : 1961-2002 2002 selected work poetry ; Gwen Harwood : Collected Poems 1943-1995 2003 collected work poetry ; Wild Surmise 2002 single work novel ; A Break in the Weather 2003 single work novel ; Portrait in Skin 2002 selected work poetry ; The Fall 2003 selected work poetry ; Anything the Landlord Touches 2002 selected work poetry -
Book Reviews
2002
single work
review
— Appears in: State of the Arts , September - November 2002; (p. 106)
— Review of Wild Surmise 2002 single work novel ; Mrs Cook : The Real and Imagined Life of the Captain's Wife 2002 single work novel -
Historic Win is Poetic Justice for Writer
2004
single work
column
— Appears in: The Advertiser , 1 March 2004; (p. 7) -
A Pint-Sized Cliff Hardy: Dorothy Porter and the Niche Marketing of Australia
2004
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Antipodes , December vol. 18 no. 2 2004; (p. 105-112) -
A Glorious Dot in the Universe
2012
single work
prose
— Appears in: The Saturday Age , 3 November 2012; (p. 20-21) -
Lust in Space
2002
single work
column
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 12-13 October 2002; (p. 13) -
‘Incomprehensible Wonder’ : Elegiac Expression in Dorothy Porter’s Wild Surmise
2016
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 16 no. 2 2016; 'This article contends that Dorothy Porter’s verse novel Wild Surmise (2002) is a postmodern elegiac work, which explores the role of unfulfilled desire and mourning. It is through Porter’s paralleled exploration of the ‘incomprehensible wonder’ offered by outer space, alongside the familiarities of domestic life that allow Wild Surmise to explore the grief attached to desire and loss. In order to read Wild Surmise as an elegiac work this paper will predominantly draw from studies of modern and postmodern Anglophone elegies. This approach will allow for a literary-historical account for how the elegiac mode stems from the elegy genre and will reveal how a discussion of elegy conventions may expand upon an understanding of the elegiac mode. This paper is informed by the scholarship of Jahan Ramazani (1994), Karen E. Smythe (1992), David Kennedy (2007) and Tammy Clewell (2009), specifically in relation to their writing of the politics of mourning and consolation within elegiac works. Accordingly, Wild Surmise will be interpreted as a postmodern elegiac work due the ways in which desire, mourning and consolation are depicted throughout the verse novel.' (Publication abstract)