Weeping for Lost Babylon

Weeping for Lost Babylon

Author	Eric Beach
Language	English
Genre	Poetry collection
Publisher	Angus and Robertson
Publication date	1996
Publication place	Australia
Media type	Print
Pages	152 pp
Awards	1996 The Age Book of the Year Award for Poetry, winner; 1996 New South Wales Premier's Literary Award for Poetry, co-winner
ISBN	0207186251

Weeping for Lost Babylon is a collection of poems by Australian poet Eric Beach, published by Angus and Robertson in 1996.

The collection contains 98 poems, from a variety of sources.

It was the winner of the 1996 The Age Book of the Year Award for Poetry, and co-winner of the 1996 New South Wales Premier's Literary Award for Poetry.

Contents

• "Basho's Autobiography"
• "A Tale of 2 Dragons"
• "A Giant is Coming"
• "You Never did Give that Much Away"
• "Painting - Man and Woman"
• "No Wild Rain"
• "In My Garden Blood and Bone"
• "Flamenco"
• "Five Seasons"
• "& th Tune Through It All Like th Rain"
• "Tears"
• "Paying Out (for Bob Harris)"
• "Give Me Your Solemn Hand, Friend",
• "Clean Bomb"
• "Dear Mum"
• "Living in a Home"
• "Downs Syndrome"
• "Visiting Lecturer on th Disabled"
• "Lost in Her Head"
• "Hollowcourt Centre for Intellectually Disabled Adults"
• "Th File on Stephanie"
• "Not Normal Intelligence (for and after Scott Weston)"
• "Handicap"
• "Poetry Puppets"
• "Once Was Always"
• "Mum's Diary"
• "We Don't Talk Sex, Religion, nor Politics"
• "How I Became a Poet"
• "Grow Parsley & You'll Have Many Children"
• "Beachy's Birdproof Fences"
• "Old Man at Raglan"
• "Hangi (for Tui Junior)"
• "Bees (for George Frederick Robson Gordon)"
• "Hands"
• "Insomnia"
• "Cat a Strophe"
• "Auditory Hallucinations"
• "Dinosaur"
• "Magnolia"
• "Knowledge a Young Wife Should Have (1905)"
• "That's It, We've Had It, Again"
• "A Box of Knives"
• "West Coast Perambulation"
• "A Map of Australia"
• "Aristocrat"
• "In th Desert You Remember"
• "Wimmera Roadsong"
• "Head-Waters, Heart-Timbers"
• "Now Erotica's Veronica"
• "Being Erotic"
• "Chaos Theory"
• "Evolution"
• "To a Fellow-Traveller"
• "Escapist Fiction"
• "Motoring th Post-Modernist Way"
• "Once I Spat on a Statue"
• "I Hate Poetry"
• "Talking to a Prisoner"
• "Salute th Officer (for Archibald Baxter)"
• "East Timor Street"
• "Emus Out of Genoa"
• "Let's Drive"
• "In th 50's"
• "In th 60's"
• "In th 70's"
• "Talkback"
• "Unaware of Your Indifference"
• "Radio Teeth"
• "Carnal Love"
• "I Want to Be Normal"
• "Watching My Ant Farm"
• "Opportunity Shop"
• "Losing Poems"
• "Fame"
• "This Woman is Crying"
• "Slow Windmills (In Memoriam Scott Weston)"
• "Port Arthur"
• "A Good Night Out"
• "Lune River"
• "Old Shed"
• "Orator"
• "Exile"
• "Complaints of Tiberius"
• "Translator"
• "Barefoot on a Beach of Shells"
• "Grief House (for Gwen)"
• "Weeping for Lost Babylon"
• "Gateway"
• "Long Distance"
• "I Didn't Believe It"
• "A Scrapbook of the Sun"
• "Phone-Call from Mal"
• "Somebody I Scarcely Know"
• "Letter from Lauren"
• "News of a Suicide"
• "Last Time I Met Him"
• "I Can Bear th Weight"
• "A Mosaic Grief"

Critical reception

In The Sydney Morning Herald reviewer Heather Cam noted that this collection is "imbued with sadness", and pointed out that "the title sequence is an elegy for his dead son."

See also

• 1996 in Australian literature