Review of Australian Poetry: Romanticism and Negativity by Paul Kane, and Bridging: Readings in Australian Women's Poetry by Rose Lucas and Lyn McCredden

Abstract

Byron was born a few days before the first fleet landed at Botany Bay, and the number of emblematic interactions between the great events of European romanticism and the origins of white Australian history might be multiplied endlessly. How, then, can Australia be anything other than a 'romantic' country? The real questions, though, must be: What does it mean to say that a place is 'romantic' and what kind of romanticism is involved? The literary mode which finds the exact nature of this romanticism to be most pressing is poetry - the high literary mode of romanticism - and so it is no surprise to see that Paul Kane's book on Australian poetry, like Andrew Taylor's earlier Reading Australian Poetry, worries away at the question 'In what way is Australian poetry romantic?'.