Waiting for the Past. Dieser Artikel ist nicht verfügbar.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.

Les Murray is the author of numerous novels and poetry books, includingThe Biplane Houses, Freddy Neptune, and Taller When Prone. He is the recipient of the Governor General's Prize, the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, and the T. S. Eliot Prize.