In his first new volume of poems since "Poems the Size of Photographs" (2002), Les Murray celebrates the grace and variousness of the world with an unfailing abundance of imagination and linguistic energy. Here is a poet writing at the height of his powers, capturing the richness of life in story-poems, word-plays, history- and myth-makings, aphoristic fragments and domestic portraits, recollections of rural Australia and moments of urban experience. Houses - as home, landscape and metaphor - form a many-sided theme of the book, and as ever Murray's evocation of the natural world is unparalleled in its inventiveness.
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'A poet of fantastic power and range... All human life is bound within Murray's poetry.' - The Observer 'Les Murray is one of the finest poets in whom the English language is now at work.' - Times Literary Supplement
About the Author
Les Murray was born in 1938 and grew up on a dairy farm at Bunyah on the north coast ofNew South Wales, where he still lives. He studied at Sydney University and later becamea translator at the Australian National University and as an officer in the Prime Minister's Department. His real vocation was poetry and from 1971 he has made literature his full-time career. His first visit to Europe was in the sixties and since then he has returned frequently delighting audiences with his relaxed and excellent readings. He has special links with Scotland, and Scots ancestors, whilst remaining an important and distinctive Australian writer. Blake Morrison, writing in the Independent on Sunday wrote 'Critics speak of him as one of the finest poets writing in English today, one of the super league which includes Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott and Joseph Brodsky' and C. K. Stead in the London Review of Books said of his poetry 'It is wonderfully disciplined writing, offering what poetry and nothing else can offer, an art that arrests one's otherwise ever frustrated sense of the richness of the life that lives only for the moment'. In 1994 Les was nominated for the Oxford Chair of Poetry which was eventually won by James Fenton. His collection, Subhuman Redneck Poems received wide critical acclaim and was awarded The T.S. Eliot Prize for the best collection of 1996. Les was awarded The Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry at Buckingham Palace in June 1999. This honour was recommended to the Queen by the late Ted Hughes, Poet Laureate.
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14 of 16 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Human light is the building whose walls are inside."
18 Jun 2007
By Luan Gaines
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Hardcover
Uninhibited by style or genre, Murray samples everything that life has to offer, what he sees and experiences, tossing out impressions that startle and attract, a facility of language and a love of place that is both extraordinary and compelling:
"But tears underlie every country. Nowhere do they
discharge the past, which is the live dark matter
that flows undismissably with us, and impends
unseen over every point we reach."
(The Welter)
Murray renders landscapes tangible, images that seduce with subtlety, yet paint a stunning portrait grounded in reality:
"Haze went from smoke blue to beige
gradually, after midday.
The Inland was passing over
High up, and between the trees.
The north hills and the south hills
Lost focus and faded away."
(A Levitation of Land)
Contrasting with the poetry that explores the sensory world, a celebration of out natural environment and a caution toward preservation, the poet displays a sharp and canny wit, undeterred from humorous musings:
"Fragrance stays measured
stench bloats out of proportion:
even a rat-size death...
is soon
a house-evacuating metal gas
in our sinuses..
give it a Viking funeral."
(The Nostril Songs)
As well the poet is a master of punsmanship, a provocateur of twisted metaphors:
"A rhyme is a pun that knows where
to stop. Puns pique us with the glare
of worlds too coherent to bear
by any groan person."
(Black Belt in Martial Arts)
A man who appreciates the beauty of nature and the history imbued in place, Murray creates streams of images prompted by the past in league with the present:
"Greeks camped out there in lean times
fishing. Their Greek islands lived in town
with their families. Now it is a National Park."
(The Offshore Island)
In "The Cool Green", Murray writes of money, its power to influence behavior, the fact that "millions eat garbage without it", its facile misuse of those in need, its irrelevance to life's grand design:
"Our waking dreams feature money everywhere
but in our sleeping dreams
it is strange and rare.
How did money capture life
away from poetry, ideology, religion?
It didn't want our souls."
The treasure of New South Wales, Les Murray captures the spirit of language in poetry that assails, provokes and haunts, his love of place rich with memory and image, evoking our finer instincts, cautioning an appreciation for the diminishing bounty of a fertile and precious earth. Luan Gaines/2007.
"But tears underlie every country. Nowhere do they
discharge the past, which is the live dark matter
that flows undismissably with us, and impends
unseen over every point we reach."
(The Welter)
Murray renders landscapes tangible, images that seduce with subtlety, yet paint a stunning portrait grounded in reality:
"Haze went from smoke blue to beige
gradually, after midday.
The Inland was passing over
High up, and between the trees.
The north hills and the south hills
Lost focus and faded away."
(A Levitation of Land)
Contrasting with the poetry that explores the sensory world, a celebration of out natural environment and a caution toward preservation, the poet displays a sharp and canny wit, undeterred from humorous musings:
"Fragrance stays measured
stench bloats out of proportion:
even a rat-size death...
is soon
a house-evacuating metal gas
in our sinuses..
give it a Viking funeral."
(The Nostril Songs)
As well the poet is a master of punsmanship, a provocateur of twisted metaphors:
"A rhyme is a pun that knows where
to stop. Puns pique us with the glare
of worlds too coherent to bear
by any groan person."
(Black Belt in Martial Arts)
A man who appreciates the beauty of nature and the history imbued in place, Murray creates streams of images prompted by the past in league with the present:
"Greeks camped out there in lean times
fishing. Their Greek islands lived in town
with their families. Now it is a National Park."
(The Offshore Island)
In "The Cool Green", Murray writes of money, its power to influence behavior, the fact that "millions eat garbage without it", its facile misuse of those in need, its irrelevance to life's grand design:
"Our waking dreams feature money everywhere
but in our sleeping dreams
it is strange and rare.
How did money capture life
away from poetry, ideology, religion?
It didn't want our souls."
The treasure of New South Wales, Les Murray captures the spirit of language in poetry that assails, provokes and haunts, his love of place rich with memory and image, evoking our finer instincts, cautioning an appreciation for the diminishing bounty of a fertile and precious earth. Luan Gaines/2007.
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