The Clean Dark

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The Clean Dark
Author Robert Adamson
Language English
GenrePoetry collection
PublisherPaper Bark Press
Publication date
1989
Publication placeAustralia
Media typePrint
Pages93 pp.
Awards1990 New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, winner; 1990 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, winner

The Clean Dark is a collection of poems by Australian poet Robert Adamson, published by Paper Bark Press in Australia in 1989. [1]

Contents

The collection contains 41 poems from a variety of sources. [2]

Contents

The poems in this collection are presented in four parts.

Part One: Re-Writing The Hawkesbury. includes epigraph: Je dis: une fleur! et, hors de l'oubli ou ma voix relegue aucun contour, en tant que quelque chose d'autre que les calices sus, musicalement se leve, idee meme et suave, l'absente de tous bouquets. Mallarme, Variations Sur Un Sujet.

Part Two: The Speaking Page. Includes Epigraphs: We spoke in words which sounded and then died away... But to create a material thing which could be used to give voice to the decree, what Word did you speak? Augustine, Confessions XI 6.

Part Three: Imagination, A Flame With Many Tongues. Includes Epigraph: Throw away the lights, the definitions, / And say of what you see in the dark. Wallace Stevens, The Man With The Blue Guitar.

Part Four: No River, No Death. Includes Epigraph: For so it is proper to find value / In a bleak skill. Geoffrey Hill, The Songbook of Sebastian Arrurruz. [2]

Individual poems

  • "Green Prawn Map" Section: Re-writing the Hawkesbury
  • "The Channels" Section: Re-writing the Hawkesbury
  • "Songs for Juno" Section: Re-writing the Hawkesbury
  • "By No Man's Code : A Song Map : Prelude"Section: Part One: Re-Writing the Hawkesbury
  • "By No Man's Code : A Song Map : The Trophy" Section: Part One: Re-Writing the Hawkesbury
  • "By No Man's Code : A Song Map : Wild Colonial Boys" Section: Part One: Re-Writing the Hawkesbury
  • "By No Man's Code : A Song Map : A Speaking Page"Section: Part One: Re-Writing the Hawkesbury
  • "By No Man's Code : A Song Map : Full Tide" Section: Part One: Re-Writing the Hawkesbury
  • "By No Man's Code : A Song Map : Fishing with My Stepson" Section: Part One: Re-Writing the Hawkesbury
  • "By No Man's Code : A Song Map : Coda" Section: Part 1: Re-Writing the Hawkesbury
  • "Gutting The Salmon" Section: Part 1: Re-Writing the Hawkesbury
  • "Couplets" Section: Part 1: Re-Writing the Hawkesbury
  • "The Speaking Page" Section: Part 2: The Speaking Page
  • "Something Survives" Section: Part 2: The Speaking Page
  • "Silva" Section: Part 2: The Speaking Page
  • "The Difference Looking Back" Section: Part 2: The Speaking Page
  • "Dreaming Up Mother" Section: Part 2: The Speaking Page
  • "Remembering Posts" Section: Part 2: The Speaking Page
  • "Angel's Own Kind : 1 : Ram Lives" Section: Part 2: The Speaking Page
  • "Angel's Own Kind : 2 : Law of the Land" Section: Part 2: The Speaking Page
  • "Angel's Own Kind : 3 : Last Rites" Section: Part 2: The Speaking Page
  • "American Sonnet"Section: Part 2: The Speaking Page
  • "Harriet Westbrook Looks at the Serpentine" Section: Part 2: The Speaking Page
  • "Lady Faith" Section: Part 3: Imagination, a Flame with many Tongues
  • "Drawn with Light" Section: Part 3: Imagination, a Flame with many Tongues
  • "Imagination, a Flame with Many Tongues" Section: Part 3: Imagination, a Flame with many Tongues
  • "An Elm Tree in Paddington" Section: Part 3: Imagination, A Flame with Many Tongues
  • "Glenmore Road, A Nocturne" Section: Part 3: Imagination, A Flame with Many Tongues
  • "Seven Days" Section: Part 3: Imagination, A Flame with Many Tongues
  • "Clear Water Reckoning" Section: Part 3: Imagination, A Flame with Many Tongues
  • "The Details Necessary" Section: Part 3: Imagination, A Flame with Many Tongues
  • "No Memory, No Magic" Section: Part 3: Imagination, A Flame with Many Tongues
  • "As Imperceptibly..." Section: Part 3: Imagination, A Flame with Many Tongues
  • "Sonnets for Robert Duncan 1919-1988" Section: Part 3: Imagination, A Flame with Many Tongues
  • "No River, No Death" Section: Part 4: No River, No Death
  • "Phasing Out the Mangroves" Section: Part 4: No River, No Death
  • "Blue Feathered Sonnet" Section: Part 4: No River, No Death
  • "Farming the Oysters" Section: Part 4: No River, No Death
  • "What's Slaughtered's Gone" Section: Part 4: No River, No Death
  • "Canticle for the Bicentennial Dead" Section: Part 4: No River, No Death

Critical reception

Writing in Australian Book Review critic Peter Craven noted that the poet's work "has always been a poetry of epiphanies in the face of nature, but a nature which was commingled with the play of language across the surface of a physical world apprehended as personal, physical, and violent." He went on: "The Clean Dark is as good a book of poetry as we have seen in ages. It has sweep without portent and colour without vulgarity." [3]

In The Age newspaper, Graeme Kinross Smith described Robert Adamson as "leaning back from the language; unafraid of silences, gaps, incompleteness; necessarily manic, Whitman-esque, Thoreau-esque, in his possession of the Hawkesbury and its valley; writing poems that are like films re-reun; that come as if from dreams, that have whispering voices behind their words." [4]

Awards

Notes

See also

References

  1. ↑ "The Clean Dark by Robert Adamson". National Library of Australia. Retrieved 14 September 2025.
  2. 1 2 "The Clean Dark by Robert Adamson". Austlit. Retrieved 14 September 2025.
  3. ↑ ""The Clean Dark by Robert Adamson"". Australian Book Review, November 1989. Retrieved 14 September 2025.
  4. ↑ ""Speeding along lines of love and nature"". The Age, 6 January 1990. ProQuest   2521225888 . Retrieved 14 September 2025.
  5. ↑ "Siobhan's Snowy stories are winners". Sydney Morning Herald, 7 September 1990, p3. ProQuest   2523209867 . Retrieved 14 September 2025.
  6. ↑ "Another Premier's literary award goes to flood for 'Oceana Fine'". The Age, 13 September 1990, p14. ProQuest   2521139267 . Retrieved 14 September 2025.
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