America

God is everywhere, God is in Zion not far from here, God is not letting your children gang out with the children of 'atheists' or 'doubters'; God is a fighter in enclaves of the passive, God is the free market, God is an extended warranty on a sports utility vehicle that will go anywhere; God is camouflage; God is cheap electricity, cheap gas, cheap clothing, cheap food, cheap entertainment, God, if not renewable, is making gestures in that direction, God is expandable, miniaturised, out on X-Box, digitalized and in stereo, or hand-made as solid as a rock, God is pro-life, pro-strength, pro-family, pro-space and pro-martial arts. God is everywhere. John Kinsella's poem "America" is very much in the mould of Blake's visionary poem "America, A Prophecy" but unlike Blake, Kinsella does not express himself in allegorical terms but delivers a trenchant, uncompromising and direct denunciation of the world's unchallenged superpower. In what Peter Porter describes in his superb introduction as a 'finely annotated and sculpted tirade', Kinsella expresses his extreme disillusionment with the country in which he has been living on and off since the turn of the century, a disillusionment felt all the more keenly because he is Australian. This is an extraordinary work, a highly political and hard-hitting commentary on contemporary America presented not as documentary but in poetry, and all the more powerful for that.