Biding Its Time. "The Man and the Map" by Alex Skovron. [review]

Abstract

Alex Skovron has always been a clever poet, sometimes playfully so, more often seriously so. Skovron, who was born in Poland in 1948 and came to Australia, via Israel, in 1958, is steeped in the European intellectual tradition, though he wears his erudition lightly. Like almost everyone else, Skovron is troubled by the twentieth century: it seems to hang over the horizon of this book. He is also concerned about the nineteenth. "The Man and the Map" is a sort of intellectual report card, a statement from the student himself about where he has got to and what has brought him there. Skovron is an interesting and talented student of the human predicament.