Phyllis Perlstone

This is an important and timely book from a mature, perspicacious voice. Phyllis Perlstone shows us a Monash behind the image on the $100 banknote: the engineer, innovator, man-about-town, husband, father, warrior, tactician; his love affairs and vanities; the prejudice he encounters and regards as 'strange dislike'. Monash's life and Australia's times start up from within the lines of poetry,...

But Now is Phyllis Perlstone's artistic statement of intent. In this book, Perlstone employs her characteristic fractured syntax and extraordinary visual focus, leaving you 'dizzy with seeing'. Unusually, though, she allows us to draw near her, in her present and her past, as she makes a personal and political reckoning. 'what is familial quietlyquivers in arttime stalls' from 'Numb' -...