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Musica Transalpina
by Michelene Wandor
Poetry Book Society Recommendation Spring 2006
Michelene Wandor's new poetry collection excels in the richness of its subject matter, the witty and sensuous language, the musicality of its rhythms and the way in which she is able to combine sophistication with accessibility.
She is as comfortable with Italian Renaissance music as she is with the poignancy of the history of Europe's Jewish populations. Her retelling of the book of Esther is a tour de force of Midrashic free-form poetry, and her speculation on Shakespeare's Dark Lady of the Sonnets is a tribute to both Elizabethan poetry and a mischievous imagination.
Michelene Wandor is her own kind of Renaissance woman. A poet, musician, a dramatist and a critic, she sees music in words and words in music. Musica Transalpina is a celebration of the process of creation during one of history's most fertile periods. A keyhole on the Renaissance.
This is Michelene Wandor's best book yet. She combines her erudition and passion as a poet, musician and scholar in a collection that gives immense pleasure, and also continually challenges the reader with the force and variety of its ideas.
...digs through a wealth of socio-cultural grounds and refertilises them with a rare and heady compost.
...this multifaceted collection presents crisp layers of deep and sometimes dark meaning. Music and meaning fly high and cross over in Wandor's work. Pain and pleasure find not only a face but also a voice in this place where the mountains really do yodel.
Paperback
104 pages
size 138 x 216 mm
ISBN 1-904614-25-6
Published January 2006
