Dear Friends,
Much has been happening of late in the Bonfire extended non-cinematic universe.
The Quarrymen by continues to shake the ground with its unrelenting hoofbeats. at The Metropolitan Review writes “Reviewers tend to be a sheepish lot, and I won’t be so elliptical here — The Quarrymen is a great work of literature. These works, in any era, only come around so often. When they do, one must pay proper attention.”
Read the whole thing: https://metropolitanreview.com/the-unrelenting-hoofbeats/
writes “The Quarrymen is one of the best books I’ve read in recent years and I want to tell you my problems with it.”
Read the rest:
While Jack Norman has declared that he is “NO LONGER TALKING ABOUT SLEEP CAPRICORN!!!!!!!1!!!” This does not mean that we won’t. In fact everyone should talk about Sleep Capricorn as much as physically possible. New wunderkind on the block does just that in a long and wide-ranging review:
“my initial and sustained impression was that Sleep Capricorn is the most humane portrait of men that I have read in probable years. It felt, there in the laundromat, breeze pressing the open doorway, that I was having a conversation with another man about our shared world. Norman does not at any point, so far as I can discern, dismiss the values and expectations of the characters he writes about.”
Unlike many critics, Isaac also wisely considers the role of the editor. “I believe the editor of Beg Love, Beg Boredom was Bonfire Book’s Lucas Smith. If it was his advice to place this story at the fore of the book, it is the smartest decision he made as editor.”
Read the whole thing:
Over at Review31 Bret van den Brink reviews ’s Broken Words.
“Though the collection is titled Broken Words, one of its striking features is its interest in repairing language — of putting words into metre and rhyme. When Caddell writes ‘Go take a glass and smash the thing to shards / To find it’ in ‘A Motion for Acquittal’, one recalls that the poem is a sonnet and that a sonnet is a well-wrought urn. Indeed, one of the pleasures of the collection is its interest in form, which ranges far beyond the sonnet — here a villanelle, there a poem in terza rima; now a poem in couplets, and now one in Tennyson’s ‘In Memoriam’ stanza. For the reader interested in traditional forms, the book provides a hearty repast.”
Read the whole thing:
http://review31.co.uk/article/view/971/well-wrought-urns-for-a-broken-world
At Mascara Literary Review Simeon Kronenberg reviews Paul Scully’s The Literate Detective & Other Crimes, finding in it a much needed corrective to current poetic trends.
“Much contemporary poetry has moved in other directions, often favouring a pared-back, often conversational idiom and an aversion to formal or rhetorical display. Against this backdrop, Scully’s work stands out for its willingness to engage openly with cadence, pattern, and the expressive possibilities of language. Rather than treating the “poetic” with suspicion, his poems affirm it as a necessary mode of attention—one that trusts in the shaping power of words and the forms they inhabit. In doing so, Scully reminds us that poetry need not relinquish its musical, philosophical, or even spiritual dimensions in order to remain fully of its time.”
Read the whole thing: https://www.mascarareview.com/simeon-kronenberg-reviews-the-literate-detective-by-paul-scully/
Reading Night
We were pleased to attend the New Oz/Ausnaissance Reading Night in Thornbury, Melbourne, last month. It was great to meet a number of Bonfire fans, sell books and see old friends and make new ones. In addition to Bonfire authors Jack Norman and Jack Cuthbertson, our E-i-C Lucas Smith read from a work in progress about the last remaining exemplars of sanity in Australia—men who spend their lives out bush looking for evidence of a living Tasmanian Tiger. A wonderful time was had by all, even those who had to strain their eyes from the stairwell. The importance of real life events cannot be overstated and we look forward to the next installment.
Coming Soon
Pre-order Audience Capture by Jack Cuthbertson: https://bonfirebooks.org/product/audience-capture-by-jack-cuthbertson-pre-order/
Ships October 15th.
That’s all for now, thanks for reading.