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Waiting For The Past: Poems

A new collection of poems from Les Murray that renews and transforms the contemporary world through languageIn Waiting for the Past, Les Murray employs his molten sense of language to renew and transform our experience of the world. With quicksilver verse, he conjures his rural past, the life of the poor dairy boy in Australia, as he simultaneously feels the steady tug of aging, of time pulling him back to the present. Here, syntax, sense, and sound combine with such acrobatic grace that his poems render the familiar into the unknown, the unknown into the revelatory. Whether Murray is writing about a boy on a walkabout hiding from grief, a sounding whale “spilling salt rain,” or leaves that “tread on the sky,” the great Australian poet’s sense of wonder, his ear for the everyday, his swiftness of thought, are everywhere in these pages. As Derek Walcott said of Murray’s work, “There is no poetry in the English language now so rooted in its sacredness, so broad-leafed in its pleasures, and yet so intimate and conversational.”

Hardcover: 96 pages

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (April 5, 2016)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0374285926

ISBN-13: 978-0374285920

Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 0.5 x 8.5 inches

Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)

Best Sellers Rank: #715,546 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #31 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Poetry > Regional & Cultural > Australia & Oceania #1161 in Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > 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.

Waiting for the Past: Poems Lady in Waiting: Becoming God's Best While Waiting for Mr. Right, Expanded Edition Teddy Bears Past and Present, Vol. 2 (Teddy Bears Past & Present) Past Life Regression: A Practical Guide To Understanding PLR - Learn How To Release Past Fear, Unlock Hidden Powers, & Gain Insight On Your Life's Purpose. ... Hypnosis, Death, Dreams, Spirituality) Letting Go of the Past: Hypnosis to Heal Your Life, Let Go of the Past and Move On via Relaxing Rain Hypnosis and Meditation Sex: It's Worth Waiting For The Art of Waiting: On Fertility, Medicine, and Motherhood Bearing Hope: Navigating the Desert of Waiting for a Child In God's Waiting Room: Learning Through Suffering Waiting in the Wings Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality Obsessions, Rituals and Wasted Time: Living with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Waiting for God to Come to the Rescue Waiting to Breathe: Finding Hope While Living with Cystic Fibrosis Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy Waiting for Jacob: A Civil War Story Patients of the State: The Politics of Waiting in Argentina Separated and Waiting Nine Plays of the Modern Theater: Waiting for Godot; The Visit; Tango; The Caucasian Chalk Circle; The Balcony; Rhinoceros; American Buffalo, et al Waiting for the Parade (Plays in print 1980) The Waiting Girl