The Silo: A Pastoral Symphony

by John Kinsella

With an Introduction by Rod Mengham

Part of our Arc International Poets series

In The Silo, John Kinsella's fifth book of poems (and the second published by Arc), the poet examines the role of the artist in the landscape and the unique character of rural life. Using Beethoven's 6th ('Pastoral') Symphony as the framework for the collection, he explores the music of an Australian rural landscape and the European impact on a tenacious yet fragile environment.

Many of the poems are vintage Kinsella, suffused in the beautifully audacious language of his later pastorals — the metonymical manipulations of time and place that set you down firmly in the Australian landscape-history, yet by the end of the poem leave you wondering how he ever arrived at such seamless transformations and transportations.

Andy Brown, PQR, Winter 1997

The Silo is a fine sequence of poems, giving us a tough, focused, loving picture of Kinsella's heartland.

Peter Bland, London Magazine (Oct / Nov 1997)

John Kinsella, in The Silo, shows himself to be an authentic poet, astonishingly individuated. There are only a handful (or fewer) English-language poets of his generation whose work is already so original, so fully formed, and so clearly destined to become part of the central tradition.

Harold Bloom

Paperback
112 pages
ISBN 1-900072-12-2
Published January 1997

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