A Lyrebird

Revelation and habit conspire in this selection of Michael Farrell’s poetry, whose shambling virtuosity brings to mind the lost art of scat singing. From his earliest poems, Farrell’s skittish lines echo the studied laissez-faire of the New York School, but they also make it new, with a startling range of tone and diction broadcast—and exquisitely garbled—from somewhere down under. Yet perhaps the most astonishing quality of Farrell’s poetry is the way it summons that rarest of affinities—a correspondence with the movement of dance. For reading Farrell’s poems can feel like one is shadowing a step, a combination, by Gene Kelly—or Savion Glover, looping and breaking across a field of trifles and sorrows. —Daniel Tiffany Enter A Lyrebird and you open onto a polyphony of slang and nuance. Expect a humorous disorientation and deep travel through undersides of all that can be said and borrowed. Just in time, since mono-culture cannot know itself, Michael Farrell’s deft bravery transmutes English and gives us journeys out. —Sarah Riggs