{"id":275,"date":"2014-03-05T23:12:02","date_gmt":"2014-03-05T23:12:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnleonardpress.com\/?p=275"},"modified":"2014-03-05T23:32:13","modified_gmt":"2014-03-05T23:32:13","slug":"growing-up-with-mr-menzies-reviews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/johnleonardpress.com\/?p=275","title":{"rendered":"Growing up with Mr Menzies: Reviews"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Morag Fraser, \u2018Best Books of 2008\u2019,\u00a0Australian Book Review<\/em>, January 2009:<\/p>\n

It is odd, and oddly salutary, to have the fifties of one\u2019s childhood revived with astringent affection instead of condescension or picket-fenced nostalgia. Yes, there was enviable and unfettered time and space then. Yes, a child could be lonely without the benefit of counsellor. And yes, there was angst and international conflict enough to provide the distant thunder every child registers without the ambivalent balm of understanding. John Jenkin\u2019s sustained poetic narrative\u00a0Growing up with Mr Menzies<\/em>\u00a0manages a double perspective: a transparent and guileless child\u2019s view of an Australian world occasionally interrupted by the detached assessment of an era, given through the tone and actions of Robert Gordon Menzies. It is the extraordinary, open-eyed detailing of childhood that makes this work so memorable.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From Jill Bamforth,\u00a0Cordite<\/em>, March 2009, http:\/\/www.cordite.org.au\/reviews\/jill-bamforth-reviews-john-jenkins:<\/p>\n

John Jenkins\u2019 narrative verse,\u00a0Growing Up with Mr Menzies<\/em>\u00a0\u2026 introduces a world of strange possibilities and serious questions.<\/p>\n

The poems which recall the language and place of Felix\u2019s boyhood do more than provide local or period colour. They also illustrate Jenkins\u2019 on-going discussion about the nature of memory, our consciousness of time, and the difficulty of representing human experience in language. Jenkins uses original and startling language to outline the problems of representation.<\/p>\n

At the end of the narrative, Felix\u2019s life is darkened by events such as the Cuban Missile Crisis and wars in Korea and Vietnam. [\u2026]It may be that his name is an irony, and that his future life on \u201ca vanilla atoll\u201d will be a precarious or restricted one, as the phrase suggests. Yet this is not the whole of the story, as readers of this complex, layered and original work will discover.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From Geoffrey Lehmann, \u2018Poetic Intimacies to be Shared\u2019,\u00a0The Australian,<\/em>\u00a0December 2008:<\/p>\n

While not being at all nostalgic, or trying to disguise the tedium and mild oppression of that era, Jenkins manages a nuanced and complex portrait. . . . [H]e is one of our most underrated poets and has a formidable technique.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From Peter Pierce,\u00a0The Canberra Times:<\/em><\/p>\n

Jenkin\u2019s book is a triumph of characterisation. . . . [An] expansive performance.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From Heather Taylor Johnson,\u00a0Overland<\/em>\u00a0(195), winter 2009, p.118:<\/p>\n

Jenkins plays with and examines memory. He is at his best when he deconstructs this process, as in \u2018Grain\u2019 and \u2018Push This Wall Back\u2019. In poems such as these, he allows his readers a glimpse of the speaker as a man who is trapped in history and in his childhood. We relate through a vicarious nostalgia, so that even if we do not recall the Menzies era we can share in the experience \u2013 his memories become our own.<\/p>\n

Conceptually, the work is outstanding . . . the opening baby-looking-up poems and the closing man-looking-back poems are snapshots of quiet brilliance, and the he-says\/she-says pieces of pure vernacular are inspired.
\n[T]his is the sort of poetry that traditionalists would love, and it is playful enough to capture a younger, more restless audience as well.\u00a0Growing Up With Mr Menzies<\/em>\u00a0is a distinctive work.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Morag Fraser, \u2018Best Books of 2008\u2019,\u00a0Australian Book Review, January 2009: It is odd, and oddly salutary, to have the fifties of one\u2019s childhood revived with astringent affection instead of condescension or picket-fenced nostalgia. Yes, there was enviable and unfettered time and space then. Yes, a child could be lonely without the benefit of counsellor. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnleonardpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnleonardpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnleonardpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnleonardpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnleonardpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=275"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/johnleonardpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":276,"href":"http:\/\/johnleonardpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275\/revisions\/276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnleonardpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnleonardpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnleonardpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}