y separately published work icon JASAL periodical issue   peer reviewed assertion
Alternative title: Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature; Vincent Buckley Special Issue
Issue Details: First known date: 2010... Special Issue 2010 of JASAL est. 2002 JASAL
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

Contents

* Contents derived from the , 2010 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
Buckley's Places, Peter Steele , single work criticism
'The motif of place is of central importance in Vincent Buckley's poetry and prose. His poem 'Ghosts, Places, Stories, Questions' is a key instance of this. There as elsewhere Buckley inflects the notion of place to encompass the heroic, the domestic, and the lyrical. In other writings he explores what it is for the body to be the self's place: for certain geographic locales to be sacred spaces or places: and for place to be the milieu in which others are encountered. Increasingly he conceives of the English language itself as the privileged place of his imagination.' (Source: http://www.nla.gov.au/openpublish/index.php/jasal/article/view/1442)
‘[W]ry-Necked Memory' : The Matter of Ireland in Cutting Green Hay and Memory Ireland, and the Poems of The Pattern, Frances Devlin-Glass , single work criticism
'This paper examines the matter of Ireland in Buckley's two memoirs, Cutting Green Hay (1983) and Memory Ireland (1985), and the poems of The Pattern (1979), in order to revisit critically the ways in which he constructs himself as a diasporic Irish-Australian, a participant in the most remote Gaeltacht. It raises questions of victimhood, of similar and different experience of being at the mercy of the land, and of his re-engineering of the place of the political in poetry. It argues that Buckley's agonized positioning as Ireland's 'guest/foreigner/son' was a project that was doomed by its utopianism, and that, obsessed as he became with Ireland, the angst within had little to do with 'the Ireland within' or without. The paper suggests that the poet's slow and unacknowledged abandonment in his Irish period of a key tenet of modernism, its distrust of propaganda and the political, is in itself a new formation which had some continuity with the radicalism of his thinking during the formative years of the revolutionary catholic apostolate he led both at the University of Melbourne and nationally. It also points to the deployment of an ancient medieval Irish trope, that of the ocean (rather than a landmass) linking a dispersed community, as one of the ways the poetry effects a resolution of the issues of being 'Irish' in a remote country.' (Source : http://www.nla.gov.au/openpublish/index.php/jasal/article/view/1409)
Wandering the Dream City : Memory, Self and the World in Golden Builders, Carolyn Masel , single work criticism
,This essay begins by examining the relationship between self, place and memory in Vincent Buckley's Golden Builders sequence and proceeds to make connections with his oeuvre as a whole. In response to the unpredictability of the city, the self cultivates both Keatsian 'Negative Capability' and self-discipline. These paired qualities make for a focused attentiveness to the city, to its inhabitants and to the speaker's own place in the scheme of things as a city-dweller and a poet. Concurring with the location of Buckley's poetry in the Romantic tradition's dialogue of self and world, this essay seeks to extend the terms of the discussion by including a consideration of one poem from the sequence in terms of its resemblance to a common Romantic lyric type. It concludes with an assessment of the contribution of personal pronouns to the subject's self-management, focussing on the use of the second person pronoun.' (Source : http://www.nla.gov.au/openpublish/index.php/jasal/article/view/1453)
Essays in Poetry, Mainly Australian : Vincent Buckley and the Question of the National Literature, William Hatherell , single work criticism
'Vincent Buckley's Essays in Poetry, Mainly Australian (1957) was Buckley's major contribution to the formation of an Australian literary canon, particularly one fit for study in the newly emerging academic discipline of Australian literature. This essay examines Essays in the context of both contemporary debates about Australian literature and culture, and the broader religio-cultural approach evident from Buckley's critical writing about Anglo-American literature and criticism as well as his Australian work. It argues that Buckley's ambivalent attitude to Australian literature, and the academic teaching of this literature, needs to be considered in the light of his anxieties about the status and role of romantic and post-romantic poetry in a modern world characterised by a lack of belief in transcendent values.' (Source: http://www.nla.gov.au/openpublish/index.php/jasal/article/view/1450)
The Burning Bush : Poetry, Literary Criticism and the Sacred, Robin Grove , Lyn McCredden , single work criticism
This article is dedicated to the critical and poetic work of Vincent Buckley. The essay takes the form of a conversation between two former students and colleagues of Buckley, and is a meditation on literature and the sacred, led by Buckley's own work in his critical volume Poetry and the Sacred, and with reference to the poetic sequence Golden Builders. (Source: http://www.nla.gov.au/openpublish/index.php/jasal/article/view/1530)
The Heart of the Matter : Vincent Buckley's Late Winter Child, Lyn Jacobs , single work criticism
'Vincent Buckley was a celebrated poet, teacher, editor, critic, essayist, reviewer, Catholic intellectual, Professor of English at Melbourne University, member of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and founder of the Committee for Civil Rights in Ireland. He was also a husband and father. This article argues that while Buckley's writing was fuelled by political and personal concerns, the songs from the heart in Late Winter Child represent the culmination of a journey to find a poetic language to express his sense of the 'paradisal possibilities of life.'' (Source: http://www.nla.gov.au/openpublish/index.php/jasal/article/view/1461)
Spaces in Vincent Buckley's Poetry, Penelope Buckley , single work criticism
'This paper traces some of the forms taken by space in Vincent Buckley's poetry and some ways in which spaces are opened, closed off, filled, invited and shaped. It loosely follows a poetic development that itself loosely follows the trajectory of the life: from country to city and imaginatively back; from a separation of Australian and Irish matter to a pattern of connections and continuities. In early poems that deal with childhood the inside of the house is shut away. In the next phase, set in early maturity and the city, rooms become important, inhabited but set apart. That pivotal poem Golden Builders multiplies ideas about space in a tumultuous process of breaking open, breaking down, linking, imprisoning, provisionality, construction and regrowth, in which the self and its thoughts and cries compete with others to be heard and felt. After this, space is used much less defensively and in The Pattern it is mapped and traversed to close the major separation in both the poetry and the life, the separation of the two source countries. In Last Poems boundaries either vanish or are contemplated without anxiety. Spaces are at ease with forms.' (Source: http://www.nla.gov.au/openpublish/index.php/jasal/article/view/1451)
Religion and Politics : A Reflection on Buckley's Legacy and the Continuing Debate, Tony Coady , single work criticism
'Vincent Buckley was not only an outstanding poet and literary critic but also a very influential religious thinker and inspirer. This paper discusses Buckley's attitudes to the relation of religion and politics in the context of his complex religious views and his strong political attitudes. It seeks to throw light on the reasons why he was often perceived as a man of the right, though this was not his self-perception and was at odds with much that he thought. The paper then enters directly into some central issues in the complex question of how religion should relate to politics.' (Source : http://www.nla.gov.au/openpublish/index.php/jasal/article/view/1454)
The Contribution of Vincent Buckley to the Newman Society and the Intellectual Apostolate in the Fifties and Sixties, Marie Joyce , single work criticism
'This paper explores the work and influence of Vincent Buckley in the context of the Newman Society and the intellectual apostolate at Melbourne University in the fifties and sixties. An exploration of his talks and writings is presented to show how he drew his listeners and readers into a powerful theological and intellectual vision but then always moved them back insistently into the messiness and struggle of their own everyday lives in the university: the local, here-and-now world, but lived with a particular vision of spiritual transcendence. Always at the heart of his thinking was a reverence for the mystery of human life, specifically each individual life and the social complex in which it is embedded. The big picture for Vin always embraced the whole of living creation. Vin was a leader of his peers in the Newman Society but also of younger people, many of whom were his students. His passionate nature, his exquisite use of language and his non-conformity with many of the usual social expectations demanded attention from those in his presence. It is argued that Vin made a unique contribution in bringing the heart and mind of a poet to shared theological reflection in that community. His writing is explored in the context of recent thinking on theology and metaphor, and poetry and the sacred. Finally, I propose that his writings provide an exemplar of an incarnated Christian life and I illustrate this thesis from his writings, including his poetry.' (Source: http://www.nla.gov.au/openpublish/index.php/jasal/article/view/1449)
Vincent Buckley : Shaping the Biography, John McLaren , single work criticism
'The basic shape of a biography is given by the facts of the life of its subject. The biographer's task is to make sense of these facts: to provide a map that will show the significance of the facts, their relationship to each other and to their historical context. This map will show the features of the subject's journey through life, but it is also the result of the biographer's own journey through the subject's life. The interactions between these two journeys give the book its shape, map its patterns. This paper will show some of the paths the author attempted and try to explain the directions the author eventually took.' (Source: http://www.nla.gov.au/openpublish/index.php/jasal/article/view/1444)
Grasping the Cosmic Jugular : Golden Builders Revisited, John M. Wright , single work criticism
'Dr John M. Wright was a student of Vincent Buckley's in the 1970s and regards him as his mentor for a life of poetry. In this paper he explains how Buckley's poetry has worked in his own emotional and intellectual life and suggests that the poetic sequence, Golden Builders, has never received the recognition it deserves.' (http://www.nla.gov.au/openpublish/index.php/jasal/article/view/1412)
Moments of Intersection : Causes for Gratitude, Jennifer Strauss , single work autobiography
'Sometimes the direction of a life can be set by someone well outside the sphere of 'close' relations. Jennifer Strauss remembers intermittent moments in which Vincent Buckley as academic and poet had such an influence on her life.' (Source: http://www.nla.gov.au/openpublish/index.php/jasal/article/view/1470)
Vincent Buckley as Colleague, Joanne Lee Dow , single work autobiography
'In 1956, Vin Buckley was in England, so I did not meet him in my first year there. But at the NSV's - the Newman Society's - Summer School he was an almost mythological key founding member. As an undergraduate, I had only one tutorial from him, and he didn't lecture to our year, or teach in the seminars I attended in my combined English and History honours year. But as a tutor (1961 - 1966 and 1976 - 1980) I went to most of the lectures so central to his wonderful teaching and influence. I want to concentrate here on my personal experience of him as a colleague. In that role, I found him to be a great teacher and exemplar, and discerningly generous to junior and other staff and students.' (Source: http://www.nla.gov.au/openpublish/index.php/jasal/article/view/1472)
Memories of Vin Buckley, Spelt from Sibyl’s Golden Leavesi"This elegant autumn weather", Chris Wallace-Crabbe , single work poetry
X