| Author | Vincent Buckley |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Angus and Robertson |
Publication date | 1961 |
| Publication place | Australia |
| Media type | Print (hardback) |
| Pages | 57 |
| Preceded by | Poems |
| Followed by | Essays in Poetry, Mainly Australian |
Masters in Israel (1961) is the second collection of poems by Australian poet Vincent Buckley. It won the ALS Gold Medal in 1962. [1]
The collection consists of 25 poems, with seven appearing here for the first time. [1]
A reviewer in The Canberra Times praised the technique of the work while also intimating something else. "Buckley, who is an erudite and polished academic lecturer carries a Jesuit-trained care of scholarship into his verse. He looks for significance in human relationships and this is reflected in the topics chosen and his treatment of them. His poems have a satisfying lucidity of expression and an evenness of execution, for he is a most careful craftsman." [2]
Originally delivered as a paper during Writers' Week at the 1989 Perth Festival, and subsequently reprinted in Westerly magazine, Vincent O'Sullivan's survey of Buckley's poetry noted: "In terms of belief, then, of commitment, of the expectations of language, those poems in Masters in Israel are a far cry from the position he described a few weeks before his death as that of a 'Catholic agnostic'. One might say of course that the more important word there is still Catholic, the sense that the adjective abides while the noun is provisional." [3]