Second Essay on Interest: The Emu single work   poetry   "Weathered blond as a grass tree, a huge Beatles haircut"
  • Author:agent Les Murray http://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/murray-les
Issue Details: First known date: 1983... 1983 Second Essay on Interest: The Emu
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Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The People's Otherworld : Poems Les Murray , North Ryde : Angus and Robertson , 1983 Z300218 1983 selected work poetry North Ryde : Angus and Robertson , 1983 pg. 48-49
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Anthology of Australian Religious Poetry Les Murray (editor), Blackburn : Collins Dove , 1986 Z212505 1986 anthology poetry Blackburn : Collins Dove , 1986 pg. 194-195
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Selected Poems Les Murray , Manchester : Carcanet , 1986 Z796575 1986 selected work poetry Manchester : Carcanet , 1986 pg. 103-105
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The Vernacular Republic : Poems 1961-1983 Les Murray , North Ryde : Angus and Robertson , 1988 Z905438 1988 selected work poetry North Ryde : Angus and Robertson , 1988 pg. 166-168
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The Macmillan Anthology of Australian Literature Ken L. Goodwin (editor), Alan Lawson (editor), South Melbourne : Macmillan , 1990 Z535337 1990 anthology criticism correspondence extract poetry drama biography short story prose humour satire travel

    'Poems, stories, letters and extracts from novels, plays and journals present a great variety of responses to Australia and to the art of writing. Items have been arranged into 12 groupings that reflect different ways of seeing the material of Australian writing. Each section has its own introduction. Problems are explained, theories and contexts for a wider understanding are offered. The book includes biographical guides to all authors and a full chronological table of events in the literary history of Australia.'   (Publication summary)

    South Melbourne : Macmillan , 1990
    pg. 327-328
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Collected Poems Les Murray , Port Melbourne : Heinemann Australia , 1994 Z422024 1994 selected work poetry Port Melbourne : Heinemann Australia , 1994 pg. 202-204
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon New Selected Poems Les Murray , Potts Point : Duffy and Snellgrove , 1998 Z918005 1998 selected work poetry Potts Point : Duffy and Snellgrove , 1998 pg. 63-64
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Landbridge : Contemporary Australian Poetry John Kinsella (editor), North Fremantle : Fremantle Press , 1999 Z310159 1999 anthology poetry North Fremantle : Fremantle Press , 1999 pg. 231-232
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon New Selected Poems Les Murray , Potts Point : Duffy and Snellgrove , 1998 Z918005 1998 selected work poetry New York (City) : Farrar Straus and Giroux , 2000 pg. 65-66
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Selected Poems Les Murray , Melbourne : Black Inc. , 2007 Z1434567 2007 selected work poetry (taught in 2 units) 'Selected Poems ... comprises what Murray himself considers his most successfully realised poems, drawn from all his collections up to and including The Biplane Houses but not including his two verse novels.' (Publisher's blurb) Melbourne : Black Inc. , 2007 pg. 61
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature Nicholas Jose (editor), Kerryn Goldsworthy (editor), Anita Heiss (editor), David McCooey (editor), Peter Minter (editor), Nicole Moore (editor), Elizabeth Webby (editor), Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2009 Z1590615 2009 anthology correspondence diary drama essay extract poetry prose short story (taught in 23 units)

    'Some of the best, most significant writing produced in Australia over more than two centuries is gathered in this landmark anthology. Covering all genres - from fiction, poetry and drama to diaries, letters, essays and speeches - the anthology maps the development of one of the great literatures in English in all its energy and variety.

    'The writing reflects the diverse experiences of Australians in their encounter with their extraordinary environment and with themselves. This is literature of struggle, conflict and creative survival. It is literature of lives lived at the extremes, of frontiers between cultures, of new dimensions of experience, where imagination expands.

    'This rich, informative and entertaining collection charts the formation of an Australian voice that draws inventively on Indigenous words, migrant speech and slang, with a cheeky, subversive humour always to the fore. For the first time, Aboriginal writings are interleaved with other English-language writings throughout - from Bennelong's 1796 letter to the contemporary flowering of Indigenous fiction and poetry - setting up an exchange that reveals Australian history in stark new ways.

    'From vivid settler accounts to haunting gothic tales, from raw protest to feisty urban satire and playful literary experiment, from passionate love poetry to moving memoir, the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature reflects the creative eloquence of a society.

    'Chosen by a team of expert editors, who have provided illuminating essays about their selections, and with more than 500 works from over 300 authors, it is an authoritative survey and a rich world of reading to be enjoyed.' (Publisher's blurb)

    Allen and Unwin have a YouTube channel with a number of useful videos on the Anthology.

    Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2009
    pg. 903-905
Alternative title: Der Emu
First line of verse: "Blond verwittert wie ein Grasbaum erhebt ein riesiger"
Language: German

Works about this Work

Les Murray: Ancient and Modern David McCooey , 2024 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Cambridge Companion to Australian Poetry 2024; (p. 183-196)

'The chapter attends to Les Murray’s fusion of ancient and modern frameworks, forms and, subject matter. It provides an analysis of “The Buladelah-Taree Holiday Cycle” in light of his desire to draw together the three strands he viewed as shaping Australian culture: Aboriginal, rural, and urban. The chapter also discusses Murray’s formal inventiveness and comic playfulness with language, and his interest in the relationship between poetry and the divine. The chapter reads Murray’s self-definition as an outsider in light of his valuing of a pastoral-georgic tradition and a focus on subjects and settings beyond the metropolitan. The chapter argues that while Murray engaged with the vernacular and was anti-modernist in outlook, his style is, nevertheless, sophisticated and neo-modernist in its technical innovation.'

Source: Abstract

Les Murray: Ancient and Modern David McCooey , 2024 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Cambridge Companion to Australian Poetry 2024; (p. 183-196)

'The chapter attends to Les Murray’s fusion of ancient and modern frameworks, forms and, subject matter. It provides an analysis of “The Buladelah-Taree Holiday Cycle” in light of his desire to draw together the three strands he viewed as shaping Australian culture: Aboriginal, rural, and urban. The chapter also discusses Murray’s formal inventiveness and comic playfulness with language, and his interest in the relationship between poetry and the divine. The chapter reads Murray’s self-definition as an outsider in light of his valuing of a pastoral-georgic tradition and a focus on subjects and settings beyond the metropolitan. The chapter argues that while Murray engaged with the vernacular and was anti-modernist in outlook, his style is, nevertheless, sophisticated and neo-modernist in its technical innovation.'

Source: Abstract

Last amended 22 Apr 2020 10:08:27
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