Glass Flowers

In Glass Flowers, Diane Fahey explores many kinds of space - the enclosed spaces of rooms, galleries, hospital wards, prehistoric caves, the airy, flowing spaces of gardens, the sky's infinite life. The collection is pervaded by a sense of the transformational power of nature and of human creativity (there are many depictions of artists and their works). It foregrounds a search for healing and acceptance - at times in the face of intolerable facts, as in a sequence on the life and tragic death of Leo Seemanpillai, a Tamil refugee to Australia. The title poem is based on paintings by Dena Kahan inspired by the Glass Flowers exhibit at the Harvard Museum of Natural History.

Each unfurled bloom, each bud, enshrines a Janus-truth:

sepals, curlicues of varnished air wear and witness

flux, never-ending illusion, stay in thrall to stillness.

And the long stems seemingly lit form within -

they too know the touch of sky-shine, the quixotic life of clouds.

Let's call it the provisional sublime.