Florid Victorian Ornament
If A.E. Housman could publish Last Poems while he was still quite alive, why can’t Renner release Florid Victorian Ornament in the 21st century? Forty poems–fully thirty percent of them entitled “Poem”–and almost all of which are written in quatrains, concluding with his only surviving long poem “Silence in Heaven,” inspired by the Jimmy Swaggart scandal of the ’80s and once scheduled for the pages of The Quarterly, but cancelled shortly before publication.
64 pages, in our popular “Triple” size. Both front and back cover shown here.
Excerpt
The pagan paint-
ing in his cave
Is functionar-
y of the grave
And hears no voice
Which might extol
That florid or-
nament the soul.
