Humour and humanity, compassion, candour and a sense of life's absurdities are the outstanding qualities of this collection, a rich and varied harvest from twenty years work and dedication. Portraits, opinions, politics, places, families, friends, religious evocations, explorations of the meaning of suffering - these scrupulous and attentive poems show affinities with Francis Webb and Thomas Merton, poets whose work was crucial in Noel Rowe's complex development. There is no other voice quite like his in our poetry and no recent volume that plumbs this depth and range of personal experience. His death is a sad loss to Australian poetry.
