"Infinite shall never meet": Perspective in Martin Johnston's "In the Refectory of the Ognissanti"

Authors

  • John Hawke Monash Universitry

Keywords:

Martin Johnston, perspective, postmodern poetry

Abstract

Martin Johnston's late poem,"In the Refectory of the Ognissanti", is considered in particular relation to Yves Bonnefoy's conception of perspective in The Arriere-pays (2012) and related essays, and in the light of Modernist re-evaluations of perspective in non-Euclidean geometry. The elegaic concerns of the work are foregrounded in relation to Christopher Pollnitz's characterisation of Johnston as a "new Mannerist" poet, with the poem distinguished from apparently similar postmodern poems in this style, such as those of John Ashbery.

References

Bonnefoy, Yves (trans. Stephen Romer). The Arrière-pays. London: Seagull Books, 2012.

Bonnefoy, Yves. The Lure and Truth of Painting. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.

Elkins, James. The Poetics of Perspective. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994.

Henderson, Linda Dalrymple. The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983.

Johnston, Martin. Cicada Gambit. Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, 1983

Lucas, John. “Martin Johnston and the matter of elegy”. Jacket # Eleven. April 2000.

Naughton, John T. The Poetics of Yves Bonnefoy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.

Sypher, Wylie. Four Stages of Renaissance Style. NY: Doubleday, 1955.

Tranter, John (ed.). Martin Johnston: Selected Poems and Prose. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1993.

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Published

2018-11-22

Issue

Vol. 18 No. 2 (2018): Late Night Nerves: Poets of the 1980s and 90s

Section

Articles

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