Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
By Gerald Murnane, Giramondo Publishing, $24.00.
“I esteem / above all poems or passages of prose / those that put a lump in my throat.” — Gerald Murnane, The Darkling Thrush.
It’s no wonder Gerald’s’ insular, self-reflexive and obsessive style of essayistic fiction’ has attracted special commendation. Perhaps best known for his 1982 novel The Plains, at 80, he has turned to poetry at the end of his literary career. He writes candid, appealing poems that navigate the prolific span of his life.
After many years as a writer of fiction, he only returned to poetry a few years ago when he moved to Goroke, in the Western Districts of Victoria, after the death of his wife.
The 45 poems collected here are in a strikingly different mode to his fiction — without framing or digressions, and with very few images, they speak openly of the author’s memories, beliefs and experiences.
The poems include tributes to his mother and father and to his family, and to places that have played a formative role in his life, like Gippsland, Bendigo, Warrnambool, the Western Districts, and of course Goroke. Especially moving are his poems dedicated to authors who have influenced him — Lesbia Harford and Thomas Hardy, William Carlos Williams, Henry Handel Richardson, Marcel Proust, and with particular force, the 18th century poet John Clare, who gives the collection its title. Even after more than 60 years spent writing, Murnane still finds the “process itself mysterious and awesome, and nothing has so mystified and awed me as the sudden coming into being of these fully-formed poems in the very last years of my career. I used the word sudden just now, but perhaps the development of the poems was anything but sudden and needed the best past of a lifetime”.
