Two new works of poetry, one universal theme: the human condition   The Sydney Morning Herald, November 20, 2024 [excerpt]

 

…there is sometimes a feeling in Salom’s novels as if a kind of Lovecraftian portal is about to open to some poetic realm: “What’s he building in there?” as Tom Waits might say. But it never does. In Hologrammatical we are in the realm, as if there isn’t another. Subterranean, crepuscular, and yet elegiac and soft, it’s like a kind of grace note to his Alterworld trilogy.

 

The effect is of someone exploring an archaeological site, ancient or modern or both, and illuminating scenes and texts in passing as their torch beam moves to and fro. Each one, lit briefly, is miraculously intact, sharply rendered, and then fades into shade as we move on. This sense is reinforced by poems at either end of the book that are defined as “time and motion” studies, calculating the efficiencies of grief, of loss, of the death of people, creatures, maybe of everything: “From the window I can almost see the sun / setting into the ocean like a wind blowing / through the coals of a forge. Then out there / is the universe, diminishing.”

 

And of course, not just the universe. Entropy, falling apart, comes to us all, whether quickly or slowly, and it’s observed throughout, sometimes sardonically, often very tenderly. He captures a feeling that’s universal but perhaps more tellingly felt by those who have moved away, as the people and even the places that were left fade away, becoming somehow more real as they do so.

 

What does that leave us with? Walking through a cemetery, at dusk, naturally, “as a fine rain tilting downwards grows on our arms like embroidery”, he says, plainly and tenderly, to his companion and to us : “We walk the longer earth together”…

Peter Keneally is a poet, writer and reviewer