"Poets have always enjoyed close relations with oracles, and oracles are fond of dazzling us with numbers. MTC Cronin's new collection of poetry counts the mystery of life, love and literature up to 50 by addition of lines, and then proceeds to the full 100 by subtracting them. Throughout the verse is precipitously oracular -- filled with strangeness and yet abidingly concerned with everyday experience. It is indeed A Book of the Dead and a Journal of the Living. This amounts to a new departure by one of Australia's most admired younger poets -- an extraordinary vision overall." --Peter Porter

"Poets have always enjoyed close relations with oracles, and oracles are fond of dazzling us with numbers. MTC Cronin's new collection of poetry counts the mystery of life, love and literature up to 50 by addition of lines, and then proceeds to the full 100 by subtracting them. Throughout the verse is precipitously oracular -- filled with strangeness and yet abidingly concerned with everyday experience. It is indeed A Book of the Dead and a Journal of the Living. This amounts to a new departure by one of Australia's most admired younger poets -- an extraordinary vision overall." --Peter Porter

"Poets have always enjoyed close relations with oracles, and oracles are fond of dazzling us with numbers. MTC Cronin's new collection of poetry counts the mystery of life, love and literature up to 50 by addition of lines, and then proceeds to the full 100 by subtracting them. Throughout the verse is precipitously oracular -- filled with strangeness and yet abidingly concerned with everyday experience. It is indeed A Book of the Dead and a Journal of the Living. This amounts to a new departure by one of Australia's most admired younger poets -- an extraordinary vision overall." --Peter Porter