Taller when Prone. Les Murray. Black Inc.
Reviewed by Michael Byrne
Les Murray, the poet, was born in 1938. He died in 2019, and at the time was considered Australia’s best poet. He lived in Bunyah, near Taree in New South Wales. He published some thirty books in Australia and overseas, including Taller when Prone. Also, at the time he was working part-time on The Macquarie Dictionary. Hence the poem ‘Infinite Anthology’ which featured in Taller when Prone. ‘Infinite Anthology’ featured some commentary and some dictionary-like definitions. An extract from ‘Infinite Anthology’ reads:
Single-word poets recycle words in advance of need, or leave
them exposed to the weather of real difference.
Wedge – cloth bunched in the groin; may cause camel toe (q.v.)
wedge – to force the pace or direction
bushed – lost (Australian)
bushed – tired (American)
bushed – suffering camp fever (Canadian)
limo – limousin cattle
proud – castrated but still interested
This extract from ‘Infinite Anthology’ was part of a substantial poem. It was from a poem where repeat readings could glean something new every time. Also, Murray was humorous in the extract. A similar-humoured extract of Murray’s in Taller when Prone was from ‘The Conversations’:
Donald Duck was once banned in Finland
because he didn’t wear trousers,
This was a short extract from a funny poem. When he was not being funny in ‘The Conversations’, Murray was interesting. Sometimes, he displayed a technical competence in ‘The Conversations’ when needed. Another humorous poem in Taller when Prone was ‘Fame’:
We were at dinner in Soho
and the couple at the next table
rose to go. The woman paused to say
to me: I just wanted you to know
I have got all your cook books
and I swear by them!
I managed
to answer her: Ma’am
they’ve done you nothing but good!
which was perhaps immodest
of whoever I am.
The poem was funny three times. All that mattered was the humour. The poem was also clear, like ‘Cherries from Young’:
Cherries from Young
that pretty town,
white cherries and black,
sun-windows on them.
Cherries from Young
the tastiest ever
grow in drought time
on farms above there.
One lip-teased drupe
or whole sweet gallop
poured out of cardboard
in whatever year,
cherries from Young.
All the roads back
go down into Young
that early town.
Murray had a passion for something healthy in the poem. Also, the poem was cool thanks to the vernacular of ‘whatever’. Murray’s usage of the word ‘whatever’ and ‘year’ also had consonance which was subtle. A less clear poem of Murray’s was ‘Natal Grass’:
Plain as wicker most of the year
along October this tousled grass
wakes up on road verges in a smoke
of sago bloom, of ginger knots
tied in a shapeless woolly plasma
but get this web across the sun
and it ignites cut-glass rose’
goblets and pitchers. In God’s name
liquid opal from a parallel shore,
the dazzle of dew anytime of day.
This was a descriptive poem and an imagist poem. There was something likeably illicit about it too – Murray was getting high on the grass of Natal, even if figuratively. Also, Murray would never have written the poem if he did not get around. He did the globe-trotting expected of a major poet in the twenty-first century. He was also quintessentially Australian in Taller when Prone. And a poet with a sense of humour hence ‘Infinite Anthology’, ‘The Conversations’ and ‘Fame’. ‘Fame’ had the tact and panache of a good stand-up comedian. There was also more serious poems like ‘The Blame’ in Taller when Prone which was about the death of Murray’s uncle. In Taller when Prone, there was almost-always something happening in every line of the poetry of Murray. Murray was too good a poet for that not to be the case.
Michael Byrne 