Conscious and Verbal : Poems

From Barnes & Noble

In July 1996, the Australian press reported that after three weeks in a coma, the country's greatest poet, Les Murray, was again "conscious and verbal." Shortly thereafter, Murray resumed his work in words, and over the next four years he wrote these 65 poems, which, in their different ways, literally or sensually, replay that dreamy announcement of the perpetually waking world.

Albert Mobilio

A necessary poetic intelligence . . . that has ventured far on the prow of his continent and made its language his own.

Elle

Eerie, frightening, and beautiful.

New Yorker

This is a survivor's poetry commissioned not by trauma but by the confidence of being alive and able.

Publishers Weekly

With armloads of international awards, over a dozen collections of poems and essays, and the spectacular verse-novel Fredy Neptune (1999) to his name, the plainspoken and combative Murray is by most reckonings Australia's leading poet. This book follows last year's new-and-selected Learning Human (2000) and takes its title and its center of gravity from the life-threatening stroke Murray suffered in 1996: that frightening experience, and his subsequent recovery, forms the plot of "Travels with John Hunter," whose vivid if talky quatrains derive their title from the hospital where the poet recovered: "Was I// not renewed as we are in Heaven?" Other short poems return to concerns long familiar to Murray's admirers. Vigorous, rough verses explore the immanence of God in the natural world, the shirtsleeves integrity of the Australian character, local and foreign landscapes (Oxford, Rotterdam, the imagined space he calls "Sunraysia"), geology, ecology, painful childhood memories and the bloodshed of "that monster called the Twentieth Century." Murray's fierce antiracism and his equally fierce opposition to anything he considers trendy remain in evidence here, as does his general tendency to moralize: "Only completed art/ free of obedience to its time can pirouette you/ through and athwart the larger poems you are in." Such awkward declamations always a Murray signature here mar more poems than they improve; worse yet, Murray's famous gift for landscape description and his brilliant feel for animals mark fewer poems here than fans might expect. Readers who admire the poet already will be glad to see further evidence of his prodigious and continuing gifts; readers not acquainted with Murraywould be well advised to start almost anywhere else. (Oct.) Forecast: While Fredy got glowing reviews, Murray's lack of a sustained presence on these shores has prevented him from enjoying the name recognition of, say, FSG stablemate Paul Muldoon. The provocatively titled Subhuman Redneck Poems (1997) continues to be Murray's strongest seller; this book will not change its standing. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

In 1996, Australian poet Murray awoke after three weeks in a coma. In the next four years, he wrote the poems in this collection, which amazingly suggest that his calamity in no way diminished the adventuresome spirit and wit for which he is known. Intrinsically traditional, Murray's rhymed and metered work is spicier than that of his many formalist peers. Of C zanne's apples, he writes, "Slant, parallel and pouring,/ every object's a choke point of speeds." A motorcyclist is a "gunning/ massed leather muscle on a run." And in a poem about poetry ("The Instrument"), he answers the question "Why write poetry?" with the disarmingly direct "For working always beyond/ your own intelligence." To American readers, Murray's local references and Aussie slang may often seem puzzling or willfully exclusive, and this is a common risk with formal poetry his tone just a bit smarmy or glib. For all that, Murray, like Seamus Heaney, tries to stretch the language while retaining some degree of coherence and personality. At his best, he shares some aspect of his remarkable reawakening. Fred Muratori, Cornell Univ. Lib., Ithaca, NY Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.