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The problem with K.F. Pearson’s Melbourne Elegies is that Goethe – on whose classic of sex­tourism, Roman Elegies 1788–1790, these rhetorical, literary poems are loosely based – is Goethe: difficult to translate, still little read in English. It gives him problems. Pearson, to my mind, is not attempting a Poundian ‘replacement’ of an ancient text within the frame­work of a contemporary poetics. That would require a reckoning with the original poem’s logistics and context similar to the way that Pound’s Propertius speaks electrifyingly in the context of an Empire much later than the Roman one he wrote for; or in the manner that Christopher Logue has recently converted excerpts of Homer into a form of late 20th century literary cinema. Such replacement requires that the contemporary poem convince us that the original work’s ‘loss’ – a ‘loss’ produced equally by its inaccessible aesthetic no less than by our contemporary lack of language-skill and culture – should matter to us.

In Partners, the unstated question is how relationships can last if they are equal – that is if they are free as well as binding. There’s a suggestion that it was easier in the old hetero-patriarchal marriages where our parents accepted inequality and could turn to authority, within and outside the relationship, to see that it lasted. Not that most of the contributors address the question directly. But in the background, there’s the cheerful assumption that getting into partnership, not into marriage, we’re getting into equality as well – an assumption that’s not borne out by the stories we’re told in the book. Maybe we are freer (at least from outside interference) and more equal than we were; but almost every partnership here turns on, is said to turn on, unequal devotion, one partner devoted, the other devotee.

Kim Scott is described on the inside cover of Benang, his second novel, as ‘a descendant of  people who have always lived along the south-east coast of Western Australia and is glad to be living in times when it is possible to explore the significance of that fact and be one among those who call themselves Nyoongar ...

As I turned the last pages of Christos Tsiolkas’ new novel The Jesus Man, the news broke of the killings at Columbine High School. I had just noted that the novel reminded me of some feminist art from the 1970s in which a woman exhibited a series of used Modess, and that The Jesus Man was the literary and male equivalent – a series of used condoms. The Jesus Man will always exist between these two images for me. Tsiolkas makes a genuine effort to explore adolescent male sexuality and its connection to pornography and violence and how these relate to contemporary media and technologies, important issues certainly.

All too few books about Australian children’s writers and writing manage to find a publisher. They’re unlikely to sell enough copies, is the standard explanation. All the more reason, therefore, to welcome an even greater rarity – a book which focuses on the work of a single writer. Even if Gary Crew might not necessarily be everyone’s first choice as the subject of such a volume, all those interested in Australian children’s literature will hope that Strange Journeys meets with a success which will encourage the publication of similar analyses of other contemporary writers’ work.

Over the years, Garry Disher has made his considerable reputation as a crime novelist on the strength of his taciturn, emotionless, lone wolf criminal, Wyatt. It seems Wyatt has taken some sabbatical, or maybe he’s just lying low, planning his next heist, because The Dragon Man showcases all new characters in a new setting. Instead of a gritty, underworld perspective we have a law-enforcement point of view, mainly per medium of Inspector Hal Challis, whose beat is the Mornington Peninsula beachside area outside Melbourne.

It’s interesting how many comic autobiographers are theatrical, like Barry Humphries, Clive James, Hal Porter, and Robin Eakin, whose Aunts up the Cross (1965) is a minor masterpiece and very funny. Eakin’s belated follow-up, An Incidental Memoir, published under her married name of Dalton, compares interestingly with Dulcie Deamer’s posthumously published The Queen of Bohemia.

Just when you have been assured, and have believed, and have claimed in print in The Sydney Morning Herald that mainstream publishers no longer bring forth volumes of verse by individual poets, along comes Allen & Unwin to confound you. Well, it is good thus to be confounded. I might not have pointed out, but the publishers remind us, over Luke Davies’ name and over his title, running with light, that this book is ‘from the author of Candy’ (also published by Allen & Unwin). So, we have a case of prose piggybacks poetry, which is all right by me. Those who read Candy, that antipodean version of Romeo and Juliet on smack, for prurient reasons may, however, find running with light not their cup of tea or drug of choice. Those, on the other hand, who responded to Mr Davies’ absolute control over and cool towards his fevered material, will warm to this collection of poems. Candy was, assuredly, a poet’s novel.

McKenzie Wark had the good fortune to ensconce himself in media studies just when those who once would have busied themselves with Stendhal or John Tranter began to envy his terrain. And his various journalistic gigs, notably his column for The Australian Higher Education Supplement, give him the advantage over other academics of being able to cobble together a book every year or two. Or, as he puts it, ‘Celebrities, Culture and Cyberspace is a book that was written in its own peculiar way, as a series of experiments with fitting events and ideas together, conducted in public, through a wide variety of print and electronic media.’