Lilt of Life

In 1918, an Australian poet wrote openly about female desire, and Sydney literary society gasped. Zora Cross's third collection doesn't apologize for wanting: these poems sing of erotic love from a woman's perspective, bold and unapologetic in an era when such frankness was cause for scandal. She celebrates the body, the rush of passion, and the strange miracle of motherhood with a directness that must have felt revolutionary. Many poems blaze as homage to David McKee Wright, the Bulletin editor who became her husband, a love that ignited one of the great literary scandals of Australian letters. This is verse that refuses to perform modesty, that finds the lilt in life's most primal frequencies. A century later, what stuns is not just the courage but the pleasure: these are poems that know joy is worth naming.