Les Murray

Highlights of Poetry. Index of poetry. How to Write Poetry. New Books read.

How to write specific forms:
Haibun. Haiku. Hay(na)ku. Rengay. Tanka.
Concrete. Ghazal. Lai. Pantoum. Prose poem. Rondeau. Rubáiyát.
Sestina. Skaldic verse. Sonnet. Terza rima. Triolet. Tritina. Villanelle.

Poets: Adam Zagajewski. Aleda Shirley. Billy Collins. Billy Collins exercise.
Snorri's Edda. Carl Dennis. Charles Atkinson. Chase Twichell. Corey Marks. Galway Kinnell. Franz Wright. Gary Young. The Gawain Poet.
Jack Gilbert. Jane Hirshfield. Jorie Graham. Karen Braucher. Kay Ryan.
Laureate Poets: Britain; USA.
Les Murray. Louise Glück. Len Anderson. Li-Young Lee. Linda Pastan. Nordic Skalds. Pulitzer Poetry Prize (U.S.A).
Richard Hugo. Robert Bly. Sara Teasdale. Snorri's Edda. Stephen Dunn. Ted Kooser. W.S. Merwin.

Books: Conscious and Verbal. Fredy Neptune. Learning Human.
Poetry. Time line. Links and Books.

Poetry of Les Murray

Conscious and Verbal (2001)

My favorite of his books.
Presented without sections.

Some favorite poems:

"The Margin of Difference".
"The Harleys".
"The Instrument".
"Music to Me Is Like Days". Nice use of slant end rhymes.
"Incunabular".
"Oasis City, Mildura, Victoria", a section in "The Sunraysia Poems".
"The Bulb of the Darling Lily", a section in "The Sunraysia Poems".
"Toward 2000".
"The Rotterdam Flight Cage".
"A Verb Agreement".
"At the Swamping of Categories".

"On the Borders".


   Upland near void of features
   always moves me, but not to thought;   
   it lets me rest from thinking.

   I feel no need to interpret it
   as if it were art. Too much
   of poetry is cricitism now.

Sample statistics:
- 64 poems in 92 pages, average of 1.4 pages per poem. [This treats the four poems under the heading "Sunraysia Poems" as independent, as they are titled separately. It they were one poem, then there are 61 poems in the book, 4 fewer 1-page poems and 1 additional 4-page poem.]
- For pages per poem, the mode is 1 pages (39 poems); 22 poems are 2 pages; 3 poems are 3 pages.

Fredy Neptune (1998)

A novel in verse.
Presented in five sections, entirely in unrhymed 8-line stanzas.

I feel similarly to Michael Glover as cited at http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/murrayl/fredy.htm:

Murray seems to have quite failed to take into account the need for a novel to be skillfully, entertainingly, cunningly plotted, back and forth, in and out, if it is to hold us over 250-odd pages. We don't find ourselves asking, with pent breath, what will happen next because the story is, in short, just one damned thing after another for the most part, and we never find ourselves sufficiently interested in characters other than Fred himself.
Michael Glover, New Statesman

However, it's won praise for its length and its material (Armenian, Nazi, and other atrocities).
But after three attempts I decided life is short and I don't have time for it.

Learning Human (2001)

137 poems that Murray considers his best from 1965-1998.
Includes 12 new poems.

Murray sees his poetry as:

"the whole simultaneous gamut of reasoning, envisioning, feeling, and vibrating we go through when we are really taken up with some matters and out of which we may act on it. We are not just thinking about whatever it may be, but savoring it and experiencing it and wrestling with it in the ghostly sympathy of our muscles. We are alive at full stretch towards it."

"Poetry models the fullness of life, and also gives its objects presence. Like prayer, it puts all the motions of our life and being into a concentrated true attentiveness to which God might speak."

Time Line.

1938 (17 October): Born Leslie Allan Murray in Nabiac on the North Coast of New South Wales.
1998: Poetry: Fredy Neptune, a novel in verse. Learning Human first published in Australia.
1999: Poetry: Conscious and Verbal, selected poems (author's choice).
2000: Poetry: Learning Human first published in USA.
2001: Learning Human short-listed for the 2001 International Griffin Poetry Prize.

Links and Books.

Links and Books.

[Thanks for visiting.]