Have Been and Are


Have Been and Are is a collection of poetry by the Australian writer Brook Emery.

Contents

The collection contains 39 poems, some of which had been previously published. As Jenny Henty notes in her review, "the title of each poem is a quotation from a novelist, poet, scientist, philosopher or composer".
  • "And the word 'environment' "
  • "Brain doesn't improvise"
  • "We are lashed to our body"
  • "The poet is a centipede"
  • "Body is but a striving"
  • "At the end of the mind"
  • "To get the better of words"
  • "The poem must"
  • "The rain falls down"
  • "The most important experience of being"
  • "I'm not sure"
  • "World without hope"
  • "I, too, find the flower beautiful"
  • "No more than"
  • "To make the universe"
  • "We behold all things"
  • "Everything waste"
  • "Only keep still, wait, and hear"
  • "Echo, repetition, statement"
  • "Stately, plump Buck Mulligan"
  • "A steady delete"
  • "The right time to write"
  • "The situation is hopeless"
  • "The brown current"
  • "A preposterous hodgepodge"
  • "What were they then"
  • "He was describing, "
  • "The lightness, the non-mass of it"
  • "There on the shore"
  • "But it would be loathsome stiff"
  • "Drive, he sd"
  • "I should be rolling down the skyway"
  • "If you write deplorable twaddle"
  • "You want ghosts"
  • "What is spoken is never"
  • "A spring day like this"
  • "Endless forms most beautiful and wonderful"
  • "Broken / Beautiful"

Critical reception

The collection has been reviewed.