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Showing posts from November, 2019

Clive James and Les Murray

Tribute by Philip Harvey Obituarists sharpened their quills in 2014 when word had it the death of Clive James was imminent. Since then we have witnessed a late flowering of poetry, reviews and articles tinged with mortality that revealed to the last his Twainian flair for journalistic self-promotion, albeit in the internet age. Now the quills are out in earnest. Les Murray’s death this year was also anticipated in advance, though Les showed himself much more accepting of his temporal departure.   The deaths of these two poets draw attention to their contrasts in style, outlook, and temperament. Clive James and Les Murray demonstrated two very different modes of existence that modern Australians readily recognise and appreciate. Both poets, ambitious for success, kept a close eye and ear on Australia and how it talks. We are the beneficiaries. Clive became the celebrated expatriate, Sydney a beacon in the mental map of a Londoner. He was an Antipodean Augustan, the Bosw

A Sonnet to Tobias Smollett

[Smollett] Contradict me and I’ll try to understand Sir, who depict us as contrariwise, Fixed with one view of those we apprise But to find that view we oft countermand. The lord is an oaf, the lady feigns sad, Nurse Jill can translate, the scholar’s a cad, The beggar’s a saint, the parson’s gone mad, The thief turns out good, Jack’s gone to the bad. How I wish to join your latest journey Sir, to share in company straight and gay Arguing types (and terms, alas!), making hay, Your servant, The Twenty-First Century. Postscript: Surely there’s something called the norm If imitation’s the sincerest form.

The Gang of One : Selected Poems, by Robert Harris

The Gang of One : Selected Poems, by Robert Harris (Grand Parade Poets, 2019) Reviewed by Philip Harvey and published in The Melbourne Anglican, November 2019 Those of us who attended the memorial for Robert Harris at Holy Trinity, Balaclava in 1993 recalled the life of a hard-working man, both in terms of manual jobs and his first vocation as poet. He was only in his early forties: “Go home and suffer employment, write. / There are so many greys you cannot fight.” Anglicanism in its many forms is an unintended running theme of this book, as we follow chronologically Harris’s evolution as a questioner after experience, through charismatic encounters, to gradual conversion steeped in Scripture and sacrament. He called his discovery of church a homecoming. Many readers of these pages will recognize well the places he’s gone. He takes to task the lazy and dismissive attitudes to religion he finds pervading our society. Harris engages in extended argument with Austra