The Weatherboard Cathedral

Last updated

The Weatherboard Cathedral
The Weatherboard Cathedral.jpg
First edition
Author Les Murray
CountryAustralia
Language English
GenrePoetry collection
Publisher Angus and Robertson
Publication date
1969
Media typePrint
Pages77 pp
Preceded byThe Ilex Tree 
Followed byPoems Against Economics 

The Weatherboard Cathedral (1969) is a poetry collection by Australian poet Les Murray. [1] This is the first collection of poems by Murray as the sole author; he had previously published The Ilex Tree in 1965 in collaboration with Geoffrey Lehmann.

Contents

The collection consists of 47 poems, some of which were published in various Australian poetry publications, though most appear in print here for the first time. [1] It contains the poet's well-known work "An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow", which has been reprinted in a number of Australian poetry anthologies since its original publication in 1967. [1]

Contents

  • "Evening Alone at Bunyah"
  • "Recourse to the Wilderness"
  • "Farewelling Contemporaries"
  • "Shorelines"
  • "Platypus"
  • "The Princes' Land"
  • "Ill Music"
  • "Windy Hill"
  • "Troop Train Returning"
  • "Tableau with Academic Figures"
  • "Blood"
  • "East Sydney"
  • "Shelduck Lagoon"
  • "Bagman O'Reilly's Curse"
  • "Existential Beasts"
  • "The Abomination"
  • "The Borgia Pope Relates a Painful Incident (for Geoffrey Lehmann)"
  • "The Wilderness"
  • "Once in a Lifetime, Snow"
  • "The Garden Path"
  • "The Commercial Hotel"
  • "The Merchants' Wheel"
  • "The Abortion Scene"
  • "Prosper the Commonwealth"
  • "Susan the Serpent : A Colonial Fiction"
  • "An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow"
  • "The Last Continent"
  • "The Count of the Simple Shore"
  • "The Incendiary Method"
  • "When I Was Alive"
  • "The Rock Shelters, Botany Bay"
  • "Treeroots and Earth"
  • Three Tries at Englynion sequence
    • "The Patristics of Fashion"
    • "Between Two Wars"
    • "A Poet of 1914"
  • "One Who Asked, Thinking He Knew"
  • "A Walk with O'Connor"
  • "If a Pebble Fall"
  • "The Barranong Angel Case"
  • "The House of Four-X"
  • "Senryu"
  • "The Canberra Remnant"
  • "Working Men"
  • "The Ballad Trap"
  • "Hayfork Point"
  • "The Spheres"
  • "The Fire Autumn"

Critical reception

While reviewing the book as a part of a survey of Australian poetry of the time, Ronald Dunlop noted that Murray "is what would have been termed in an age less self-conscious about its literary terminology a poet of the outback. The poetry in his new book, The Weatherboard Cathedral comes directly from his knowledge of and affection for the land and its people. These positive values give his work warmth that could not be achieved by the simple desire to herald the triumph of the good earth over city sin. In his most characteristic poems, ‘Troop Train Returning’, ‘Recourse to the Wilderness’ or ‘The Wilderness’, for example, journeys inland ‘beyond the Divide’ or to ‘the waterless kingdom’ become pilgrimages in search of self and old values." [2]

In his 2010 essay "Art with It's Largesse and Its Own Restraint : The Sacramental Poetics of Elizabeth Jennings and Les Murray", included in the critical anthology Between Human and Divine : The Catholic Vision in Contemporary Literature edited by Mary R. Reichardt, Stephen McInerney opined that "The Weatherboard Cathedral reveals the many-sidedness of Murray's sacramental poetic. As well as depicting a world saturated with God's presence (a dimension of Murray's work that reached its apotheosis in the 1992 collection Translations from the Natural World), it also shows how the sacramental enlarges to embrace the sacrificial aspects of the human and animal kingdoms." [3]

See also

Related Research Articles

Les Murray (poet)

Leslie Allan Murray was an Australian poet, anthologist, and critic. His career spanned over 40 years and he published nearly 30 volumes of poetry as well as two verse novels and collections of his prose writings. Translations of Murray's poetry have been published in 11 languages: French, German, Italian, Catalan, Spanish, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Hindi, Russian, and Dutch. Murray’s poetry won many awards and he is regarded as "the leading Australian poet of his generation". He was rated in 1997 by the National Trust of Australia as one of the 100 Australian Living Treasures.

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.

— closing lines of Rudyard Kipling's If—, first published this year in Rewards and Fairies

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.

John Meade Haines was an American poet and educator who had served as the poet laureate of Alaska.

Ron Pretty

Ron Pretty is an Australian poet, publisher and teacher.

"The Creek of the Four Graves" is a poem by Australian writer Charles Harpur that was first published in three parts in The Weekly Register of Politics, Facts and General Literature on 9 August, 16 August and 23 August 1845.

"Where the Dead Men Lie" is a poem by Australian poet Barcroft Boake. It was first published in The Bulletin magazine on 19 December 1891, and later in the poet's poetry collection Where the Dead Men Lie, and Other Poems (1897).

Where the Pelican Builds is a poem by Australian poet Mary Hannay Foott. It was first published in The Bulletin magazine on 12 March 1881, and later in the poet's collection Where the Pelican Builds and Other Poems (1885).

Paul Kane (poet) American poet

Paul Kane is an American poet, critic and scholar. Awards for his work include Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Bogliasco Foundation, a Fulbright Award, and an honorary doctorate from La Trobe University in Australia. He is also considered an Australian poet. Kane teaches at Vassar College and lives in Warwick, New York.

Ronald McCuaig Australian journalist, literary critic, and childrens writer

Ronald McCuaig was an Australian poet, journalist, literary critic, humorist and children's author. He was described by Geoffrey Dutton as "Australia's first modern poet" and Kenneth Slessor included him in "the front rank of Australian poets". His work was the subject of one of Douglas Stewart's 1977 Boyer Lectures for the ABC. Most of his poems were first published in The Bulletin, which he joined as a member of staff in 1949, becoming short story editor from 1950 to 1960. In Norway he is well known for his children's book Fresi Fantastika, translated into Norwegian in 1975, originally published as Gangles in English in 1972.

"Five Bells" (1939) is a meditative poem by Australian poet Kenneth Slessor. It was originally published as the title poem in the author's collection Five Bells : XX Poems, and later appeared in numerous poetry anthologies.

This article presents a list of the historical events and publications of Australian literature during 1969.

<i>A Counterfeit Silence: Selected Poems</i>

A Counterfeit Silence : Selected Poems (1969) is a poetry collection by Australian poet and novelist Randolph Stow. It won the Grace Leven Prize for Poetry in 1969.

References

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.