RES PUBLICA

Zireaux- Immortal Muse Publishers - $21.95

This is a novel in verse form running to almost 300 pages. It is the story of "seven years and fifty weeks in the life of Arcady Robinson, and intelligent, gifted, recently married, and recently disillusioned young poet who one day makes a revolutionary discovery off the eastern coast of New Zealand".

I don't rate myself as a judge of the poetic form but two fellows who do know a lot about the subject, and whose views I respect, have both heaped it with praise.

Here is Alistair Paterson, poet, editor and anthologist - "A tour de force......after the manner of Lord Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, and more particularly Don Juan".

And Iain Sharp, poet, journalist, librarian - "Some of Zireaux's rhymes have a twinkling of ingenuity not unworthy of Byron, W.S.Gilbert of Cole Porter.......what impresses most of all is his ability to sustain the flow over dozens of stanzas....thoroughly contemporary.....".