Dr. Paul Monk on Poetry (Part 2): Further Poems from ’Red Ochre For The Moon Goddess’ and ’Wine On The Flames’

In this podcast, Nick Fabbri and Dr. Paul Monk discuss and recite a further selection of poems from Monk's recent collections dedicated to his muse, Rachael: Red Ochre For The Moon Goddess and Wine On The Flames. These 600+ poems represent a unique, enduring, and intellectually intimate poet-muse relationship forged largely across continents and oceans.

Key Discussion Points include:

• Poetry as Self-Expression: Contrasting his objective world affairs analysis with the self-expression of poetry, which reflects inner feelings, experience, and meaning.
• The Extraordinary Muse: Monk credits Rachael's deep literacy, wit, and singular focus on wanting poetry for catalyzing the abundance of his verse (600+ poems).
• The Poetic Act vs. Life: A core paradox is discussed: their relationship is sustained because a conventional life is not possible due to distance and age, allowing them to be fully engaged in "loving and living" through poetry.
• Classical and Erotic Metaphors: Monk frames the relationship using classical literature for erotic or political contexts, such as Odysseus and Circe in the Odyssey ("In the House of the Goddess") or the long courtship likened to Alexander the Great's Siege of Tyre ("The Siege of Tyre").
• The Battle of the Soul: Poems reflect the internal struggle between the poet's rational mind and his fervent emotional reality, often using military and mythological figures like Rommel of the Heart or the dismembered Osiris (raised by Rachael/Isis).
• Metaphysics of Love: Monk utilises complex philosophical concepts, like the search for transcendent purpose, referencing Goethe's Roman Elegies and the Kabbalah (the garden of pomegranates) to give dignity and meaning to their unconventional relationship.
• Tributes to the Classics: The collections frequently engage with literary masters, including reflections on Catullus ("Catullus 101"), Shelley ("Reading Epipsychidion"), and the medieval poets Dante and Petrarch.
• Modernity and Romance: The poetry blends the ancient and modern, contrasting Verdi's La Traviata (with his rival as Baron Douphol) with spontaneous modern communication, such as Rachael's elegant Latin text: amor recumbens aurorae.
• The Final Elegy: The structure is bookended by an elegy (Book XXIV) that appropriates the funeral pyre of Hector from the Iliad, suggesting that the collected verse itself is the glistening "Wine On The Flames" of his mortal experience
• The Poet's Lot: The ultimate goal is the preservation of this unique love, culminating in the sonnet's wish that the 700 poems would be "roses dried and pressed/ Heaped around your place of final rest".

Dr Paul Monk is a poet, polymath and highly regarded Australian public intellectual. He has written an extraordinary range of books, from Sonnets to a Promiscuous Beauty (which resides in former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s library), to reflective essays on the riches of Western civilisation in The West in a Nutshell, to a prescient 2005 treatise on the rise of China in Thunder from the Silent Zone: Rethinking China.