Free Downloads Waiting For The Past
The clearly focused lyrics of Les Murray’s Waiting for the Past are rich in topographies and the languages peculiar to them —wonga vines, lyre birds, gum trees, shrike thrushes, tallow boughs, boab trees, the octopus in Wylies Baths killed by sterilising chlorine. With the erasures the modern world brings, words, landscapes, and lives descend to the Esperanto of the modern. The poet, with a salutary resistance, rejects the computer and the incursions of the leveling Modern in favor of old-fashioned typewriters, unlikely saints, lived-in places, farming in the spirit of ancestors. This is the past he waits for in scenes unmade by human carelessness, not only in his rural place but across the world. The poems speak of the unspeakable, including old age, vertigo, illness, and the durable resilience of married love.
Paperback: 72 pages
Publisher: Carcanet Press Ltd. (September 1, 2015)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1784101168
ISBN-13: 978-1784101169
Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 0.3 x 5.4 inches
Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
Best Sellers Rank: #784,683 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #40 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Poetry > Regional & Cultural > Australia & Oceania
Les Murray dedicates each of his books 'To the Glory of God', a slight tweak on the Jesuit's motto. If I were God, I'd grade this latest offering B minus.Murray's standing isn't in doubt. He has won the T.S Eliot Prize, the Petrarch Prize and the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, and many feel his flight to Sweden is long overdue. His poems enjoy a proverbial status in his native Australia, particularly 'The Dream of Wearing Shorts Forever', 'The Tin Wash Dish' and 'The Quality of Sprawl.' Blake Morrison ranked him in the same league as Heaney, Walcott and Brodsky; Brodsky himself said 'Murray is 'quite simply, the one by whom the language lives.'Murray's language is unforgettable. It needs to be: his eyes are like telescopes. No one else could describe the Taj Mahal thusly:In a precinct of liver stone, highOn its dais, the Taj seems bloc hail.Or water gardening:Blueing the blackened waterthat I’m widening with my spadeas I lever up water tussocksand chuck them ashore like sopping cometsis a sun-point, dazzling heatlessacetylene, under tadpoles that swarmwobbling, like a species of fliesand buzzing bubbles that speedupward like many winged species.Unwettable green tacos are lotus leaves.Waterlily leaves are notches plaquesof the water.When Murray looks at something - an Emu, a firework, a woman's flowing hair - he makes you feel like you've never seen one before. No one who cares about the health of poetry can ignore him and expect to be taken seriously.There are strong similarities with his 2004 collection Poems the Size of Photographs, in its lean, often imagist style.
The New Lady in Waiting: Becoming God's Best While Waiting for Mr. Right Waiting for the Past Waiting for Daylight: King Ranch: Images from the Past Getting Past Your Past: Take Control of Your Life with Self-Help Techniques from EMDR Therapy Past Time, Past Place: GIS for History Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts: Charting the Future of Teaching the Past (Critical Perspectives On The Past) Secret Window, Secret Garden: Two Past Midnight (Four Past Midnight) Waiting for the Sun: A Rock & Roll History of Los Angeles Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America Waiting Waiting Is Not Easy! (An Elephant and Piggie Book) Waiting for the Biblioburro/Esperando el Biblioburro: (Spanish-English bilingual edition) Waiting for Wings Waiting for Baby Dating, Relating, Waiting: God's Word on Purity Finally the Bride: Finding Hope While Waiting Finally the Bride: Finding Hope While Waiting: The Single Woman's Guide to the Wait for a Husband and Marriage Songs for the Waiting Our One Great Act of Fidelity: Waiting for Christ in the Eucharist Waiting for Food, Number 3: More Restaurant Placemat Drawings
