Act One
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Edition: 1st ed.,
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Tanning and foxing
Markings: Previous owner
From the sun-bleached landscapes of Western Australia to the intimate corridors of the human soul, Act One announces the arrival of a remarkable poetic voice with startling clarity and conviction. Randolph Stow's debut poetry collection, published in 1957 when the author was barely twenty years old, chronicles a young man's reckoning with place, identity, and the raw emotional terrain of early life — weaving together personal revelation and a profound sensitivity to the Australian landscape. Stow writes with a lyrical intensity that belies his youth, presenting images of haunting beauty and existential weight that place him firmly within the tradition of the great antipodean poets. His verse is spare yet resonant, drawing on the mythic and the mundane in equal measure, and anticipating the themes — isolation, belonging, the interplay of memory and place — that would come to define his celebrated novels A Haunted Land and The Merry-Go-Round in the Sea. For readers who prize poetry that illuminates the threshold between innocence and experience, Act One is a rare and rewarding discovery.
Author: Randolph Stow
Format: Hardback
Published: 1957, Macdonald, London
Genre: Poetry
Edition: 1st ed.,
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Tanning and foxing
Markings: Previous owner
From the sun-bleached landscapes of Western Australia to the intimate corridors of the human soul, Act One announces the arrival of a remarkable poetic voice with startling clarity and conviction. Randolph Stow's debut poetry collection, published in 1957 when the author was barely twenty years old, chronicles a young man's reckoning with place, identity, and the raw emotional terrain of early life — weaving together personal revelation and a profound sensitivity to the Australian landscape. Stow writes with a lyrical intensity that belies his youth, presenting images of haunting beauty and existential weight that place him firmly within the tradition of the great antipodean poets. His verse is spare yet resonant, drawing on the mythic and the mundane in equal measure, and anticipating the themes — isolation, belonging, the interplay of memory and place — that would come to define his celebrated novels A Haunted Land and The Merry-Go-Round in the Sea. For readers who prize poetry that illuminates the threshold between innocence and experience, Act One is a rare and rewarding discovery.