David McCooey is one of the most controlled and attentive poets writing in Australia. He allows a book to evolve over a period of time, and is willing to wait until the right poem comes. He never forces a line, never wastes a poem. For him, writing poetry is a serious art that has purpose and goes out into the world loaded with implication. Renowned as a critic as well as a poet, McCooey's careful study of poetry is shown in his poems, but they never rely only on this learning and consideration of craft. They sparkle with necessity and deeply felt insight into how one discusses the many layers of conducting a life. This remarkable book almost liberates an aesthetics, and is in itself a work of great beauty mixed with moments of biting satire. There is superb balance in this combination. The language is skilfully shaped and wielded, and the considerations deadly. Film, family life, raising a child, concerns with the mechanisms of 'culture' and 'ways of seeing', all overlap and segue into each other. McCooey takes risks in subtle and complex ways. Intertexts with thinkers like Winnicott form major threads while an engagement with Stanley Kubrick's films form others. This is a book of devastating frankness, and of great tenderness, but it is never overly delicate or polite. There's no voice much like it in Australian poetry, though at times it reminds me of some South American poets, and certainly of some French poets. It's the wit, the aphoristic turn just when it's needed, both within poems and within the timing of the book as a whole. McCooey has become entirely his own poet - genuinely good and essential. Read him! -- John Kinsella