Embracing the Razor : Puncher & Wattmann : 9781922186621 : 1922186627 : 01 Mar 2015 : Tender poems on the death of his wife, witty Philip Larkin apercus, meditations on the spiritual need of Australians for Europe, hard-eyed satire as a political fixer dismisses as out-of-date the instruments of torture in the Tower of London: John Upton's range is broad and his poetic skills accomplished. There's also wit, along with rollicking humour and love of the absurd, with jealous Othello transposed into Sydney's posh Eastern Suburbs, and a defrocked priest with a gambling habit sacked and clerking at the TAB. "Sickness, grief, witnessing the coming of death, love, travelling, they might never have had so much dignity granted them. The voice of these poems barely lifts above a whisper but punches great holes in the psyche all the same. If these four-o'clock-in-the-morning words do finally touch us, with some sense of a soul, we must be grateful Mr. Upton went without his sleep for us." - Kevin