Two Les Murray Poems

An Appreciation of Les Murray's "Poetry and Religion"

In his poem, "Poetry and Religion", Murray argues that we will always have religion "while there is poetry" (20). It is really a defence of the poet's trade, for he claims that poetry and religion feed off each other and implies that only the poet whose craft is words can adequately articulate a religion. This is possible because a religion captures God ... in our world "as in a mirror" (20). So the God he speaks of is immanent in things and can sometimes be glimpsed. This is a powerful theology, offering rich possibilities for poetic explorations. The crux of his argument is that religion will not necessarily focussed only on the other-worldly.

In free verse of eight verses of three lines each, Murray surprises us with interesting verbs, "concert our daylight.....till it's dreamed out in words ..... that figures in words only"(6). These verbs burying paradoxes tantalise us until we realise that a dream in pictures needs to be realised finally in words, a realisation that suggests that a poet is our most reliable seer.

I found this poem ambitious and relatively successful. I may not particularly like its rather philosophical progress, but I do find it consoling that a religion can be "intermittent" because, since it is always "fixed", we can can constantly return to a sure path while our convictions wax and wane in the waves of twentieth century life.

Appreciation of "Recourse to the Wilderness"

Dedicated obviously to a boyhood friend who died, "The Wilderness" revisits the wide Australian outback. In his own voice and penniless in Sydney, Murray muses about happier times in his childhood when frivolous games "put spine into shapeless days". It celebrates the weirdness of the Great Australian Bight behind Port Augusta. We do get the feel of the limitless plains, the burnt mountains, the glittering sky, the blind grey scrub and the dust-devil.

Murray certainly reminds me of Hopkins in "Pied Beauty" and "God's Grandeur" with his neologisms, word play and philosophical musings. His sixth stanza is a one line key to the reverie. He resolves his grief on an optimistic note: the Outback offers infinite variety and suggests a limitless scope for discovery in life: he is fascinated with "the is-ful and the ah!-ness of things" (32).

I didn't really enjoy this poem: it was self indulgent and too diffuse to offer a meaty hook. It is autobiographical and whimsical. Wistful, nostalgic and even elegiac in mood, this poet covers his grief with cameo descriptions and happy memories of Peter Barden. I felt the conclusion was too abrupt, a false appendage to his reverie.

Return to Main Menu