READINGS OF THE WORK BY PHILIP HARVEY

  Perverb A slight subversion is a shared smile: He who laughs last didn't get the joke. Lead with the chin and lose your grin. One hand clapping gets the ears flapping. What doesn't kill you leaves your nose out of joint. Keep your eye on the ball and shoulder to the wheel. A phone in the hand is a crash in the pole. It takes the biscuit how the cookie crumbles. Money makes the world go round money. Phoney pols are a crash in the polls. Her Greek gifts were his Achilles heel. Trackwork means footwork: less trains less often. All roads lead to home sweet home. When in Rome, go to Rio. Eye When in Rome, go to riotous Raphael Crowded with weekday shoppers in bold folds, Their once-in-a-lifetime vistas untold Where empires' blockbusters never fail. Vespas buzz out of sight of oculus; Palaces peer down, churches seek repair. Human-high inscriptions defy despair, Cool sublime atop the ridiculous. Eye summonses, with palindrome...

[Montaigne] His book of desires is a thousand tracts His heart pursues where they will go, now. Spontaneous is thought so just relax; Originality comes, he knows not how. He fends between ignorance and madness, Neither extreme a true account of self. He wends between some good and too-badness On horseback, in court, bed, by book shelf. With him, digression is progression. He never seeks to hide distracting thoughts, Interrogates his final impression: It takes a special kind of mind and all sorts. His book is like others in only this: I know this, I know that, and here it is. Photograph is of morning reading at Wye River. That’s me, soaking up Sarah Bakewell’s wonderful book on Michel de Montaigne entitled ‘How to Live’. Our cat April meanwhile gives a practical demonstration of how to live. Photograph by Carol O’Connor.

Today I wrote a 100-word piece on Mirka Mora, whose show is currently on at Heide Gallery. These words reminded me of being with Mirka one time, a memory that follows the 100 words: Table (December) It’s a noisy time at Tolarno, the tables discussing the rich tapestry of life, everyone in stitches. Is this an angel at my table, or another politician? December’s mad enough, but new year’s eve? That one with the ‘Q for Quest’ tee-shirt, how did she get in? Probably one of the family. Perhaps Quest is the answer to the question. That dragon on the far table must be one hundred if she’s a day. And that fellow there’s turning into a wine bottle. Bohemia has its limits and they are ragged around the edges. Who is your favourite French poet? 'Q for Quest' reminds me of the hour or so we spent with Mirka during the anniversary party for the Hill of Content Bookshop, sometime in the nineties. The party was upstairs next door at Florentino. Very...

Here are the first ten books found here at home this morning that could only have been purchased in Australia at Collected Works Bookshop: 1. A Far Rockaway of the heart, by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. (New Directions, 1997) 2. Collected essays, by Antoni Tapies. Translated by Josep Miquel Sobrer. (Fundacio Antoni Tapies & Indiana University Press, 2011) 3. The Council of Egypt, by Leonardo Sciascia. Translated by Adrienne Foulke. (Carcanet, 1988) 4. Chemical cart, by Philip Hammial. (Island Press, 1977) 5. Country harbor quiet act around : selected prose, by Larry Eigner. (This Press, 1978) 6. Lost possessions, by Keri Hulme. (Victoria University Press, 1985) 7. The stories and recollections of Umberto Saba. Translated by Estelle Gibson. (Sheep Meadow Press, 1993) 8. Finding the islands, by W.S. Merwin. (North Point Press, 1982) 9. Hotel Lautréamont, by John Ashbery. (Carcanet, 1992) 10. Localities, by Robert Harris. (Seahorse Pu...

This review first appeared in the December 2018 issue of The Melbourne Anglican. ‘Books that saved my life : reading for wisdom, solace and pleasure’ by Michael McGirr. Text Publishing, 2018. ISBN 9781925773149 At university, friends of mine circulated lists of books thought necessary for any fully-educated person to read. More recently we’ve seen the phenomenon of the one hundred books we have to read before we die, as though life is a race to get through someone else’s favourite reading. Michael McGirr’s book is not like that. In forty chapters he talks about forty books, and more, that have positively influenced his understanding of himself and the world. Read a chapter a day, it is recommended as a Lenten book with a difference, especially as we find him saying: “Reading will feed your hungry mind and take your heart on a journey. It will help you on the path of one of life’s most elusive and hard-won freedoms, freedom from the ego.” He reads Thomas Merton to “underst...

Email from Max Richards, 5 th April 2011: This is the title of a short essay in Craig Raine, Haydn & the Valve Trumpet , Faber 1990. Read it, accept it, and call off your projected gathering on the topic! On the other hand, read it, demolish it and then do your thing... Just chanced on my copy of Raine in a box tother day, and only just now looked down the contents page. How goes it, anyway? To my surprise I spent time Sunday morning in the Castlemaine Anglican church, because my friend Lorender Freeman of Barkers Creek is a keen Anglican there, and an old longlost friend who now lives in C., was to be playing the cello with a small group for just that session. Bob Long, doctor and cellist. The session was for children first, and they sat on the floor up front and were engaged in conversation by the junior priest. The senior one is the great Rev Ken, whose surname will come to me in a moment. Ken has done much for J. S. Neilson in the past and introduces art and lit i...

Yes is the author’s last word, linked by its ess to Stately. Yes is much easier to understand than Stately. Why did he choose the word, standing like an ornate boss at the opening? The story is set neither in blossoming April nor shilly-shallying September, but in what Italians call Estate. The first character veers Wildely between stately and plump, as does the female lead, though we do not laugh at the words’ incongruity when referred to her. We peer widely, rather. Stately forewarns us of the State of Ireland, of which we’ll hear much, coming about out of famine.