John Shaw Neilson

Traditionally, there has been an almost physical force, like a law of gravitation, making Australian literature’s visibility in the United States an elusive phenomenon. This is not, contrary to received opinion, because Australian literature did not meet world standards. It is hard to conceive of Christopher Brennan, Joseph Furphy, and John Shaw Neilson not meeting ‘world standards’. What does this mean, anyway? It seems to indicate not just that the work is of merit but that it is aware of wider literary and cultural conversations. Brennan and Furphy’s overt intertextualities show their enmeshment with global literary developments. Neilson’s cosmopolitanism, as Helen Hewson has shown, is there, but is admittedly more difficult to discern. Yet Neilson’s poetry makes demands that show that pure poetry can be as indicative of sophistication as heavily allusive verse, as in ‘Song Be Delicate’: