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Taller When Prone: Poems
Taller When Prone has at its heart Les Murray's celebrations of the rural world in Australia and elsewhere, evoked with a deep understanding of landscapes, and the seasons, working lives and languages that have shaped them. Stories and songs, fragments of conversations, memories and satire comprise this varied, habitable world. In Murray's vigorous and sinuous language, 'song and story are pixels / in a mirrorball', reflecting back to us endless possibilities.
- GenresPoetry
88 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2010
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About the author
Les Murray
79 books63 followersLeslie Allan Murray (born 1938) was the outstanding poet of his generation and one of his country's most influential literary critics. A nationalist and republican, he saw his writing as helping to define, in cultural and spiritual terms, what it means to be Australian.
Leslie Allan Murray was born in 1938 in Nabiac, a village on the north coast of New South Wales, Australia, and spent his childhood and youth on his father's dairy farm nearby. The area is sparsely populated, hilly, and forested, and the beauty of this rural landscape forms a backdrop to many of Murray's best poems, such as 'Spring Hail':
"Fresh-minted hills
smoked, and the heavens swirled and blew away.
The paddocks were endless again, and all around
leaves lay beneath their trees, and cakes of moss."
His parents were poor and their weatherboard house almost bare of comforts; Murray remarked that it was not until he went to the university that he first met the middle class. His identification was with the underprivileged, especially the rural poor, and it was this that gave him his strong sense of unity with Aborigines and with 'common folk'. The title he chose for his Selected Poems, The Vernacular Republic, indicates both this sense of unity and his Wordsworthian belief that through the use of 'language really spoken by men' poets can speak to and for the people.
Many of the Scottish settlers on the New South Wales coast had been forced out of Scotland by the Highland clearances of the l9th century, and they in turn were among those who dispossessed the Aboriginal Kattang tribe around the Manning valley; in later years Murray's own father was forced off the land by family chicanery. The theme of usurpation, whether of land or of culture, as well as the influence of Murray's Celtic background, often make themselves felt in his work, as one sees in poems such as 'A Walk with O'Connor,' in which the two Australian Celts try in vain to understand Gaelic on a tombstone, the grave becoming symbolic of the death of Celtic culture:
"...reading the Gaelic, constrained and shamefaced, we tried to guess what it meant
then, drifting away, translated Italian off opulent tombstones nearby in our discontent."
In 1957 Murray went to the University of Sydney to study modern languages. While there he worked on the editorial boards of student publications. At Sydney he was converted from the Free Kirk Presbyterianism of his parents to Roman Catholicism, and the influence of passionately held Christian convictions can be seen everywhere in his verse, though seldom overtly; instead it shows itself, in poems such as 'Blood' or 'The Broad Bean Sermon,' in a strong sense of the power of ritual in everyday life and of the sacramental quality of existence. 'AImost everything they say is ritual,' he remarked of rural Australians in one of his best-known poems, 'The Mitchells.'
He left Sydney University in 1960 without a degree, and in 1963, on the strength of his studies in modern languages, became a translator of foreign scholarly material at the Australian National University in Canberra. His first volume of poems, The llex Tree (written with Geoffrey Lehmann), won the Grace Leven Prize for poetry on its publication in 1965, and in the same year Murray made his first trip out of Australia, to attend the British Commonwealth Arts Festival Poetry Conference in Cardiff. His appetite whetted by this visit, he gave up his translator's post in 1967 and spent over a year traveling in Britain and Europe. Travel had the effect of confirming him in his Australian nationalism; he was a republican who believed that Australia should throw off the shackles of political and cultural dependence, and he saw his work as helping to achieve that end.
On his return to Australia he resumed his studies, graduating from Sydney University in 1969. After that he earned his living as a full-time poet and writer. He was one of Australia's most influential literary critics.
Leslie Allan Murray was born in 1938 in Nabiac, a village on the north coast of New South Wales, Australia, and spent his childhood and youth on his father's dairy farm nearby. The area is sparsely populated, hilly, and forested, and the beauty of this rural landscape forms a backdrop to many of Murray's best poems, such as 'Spring Hail':
"Fresh-minted hills
smoked, and the heavens swirled and blew away.
The paddocks were endless again, and all around
leaves lay beneath their trees, and cakes of moss."
His parents were poor and their weatherboard house almost bare of comforts; Murray remarked that it was not until he went to the university that he first met the middle class. His identification was with the underprivileged, especially the rural poor, and it was this that gave him his strong sense of unity with Aborigines and with 'common folk'. The title he chose for his Selected Poems, The Vernacular Republic, indicates both this sense of unity and his Wordsworthian belief that through the use of 'language really spoken by men' poets can speak to and for the people.
Many of the Scottish settlers on the New South Wales coast had been forced out of Scotland by the Highland clearances of the l9th century, and they in turn were among those who dispossessed the Aboriginal Kattang tribe around the Manning valley; in later years Murray's own father was forced off the land by family chicanery. The theme of usurpation, whether of land or of culture, as well as the influence of Murray's Celtic background, often make themselves felt in his work, as one sees in poems such as 'A Walk with O'Connor,' in which the two Australian Celts try in vain to understand Gaelic on a tombstone, the grave becoming symbolic of the death of Celtic culture:
"...reading the Gaelic, constrained and shamefaced, we tried to guess what it meant
then, drifting away, translated Italian off opulent tombstones nearby in our discontent."
In 1957 Murray went to the University of Sydney to study modern languages. While there he worked on the editorial boards of student publications. At Sydney he was converted from the Free Kirk Presbyterianism of his parents to Roman Catholicism, and the influence of passionately held Christian convictions can be seen everywhere in his verse, though seldom overtly; instead it shows itself, in poems such as 'Blood' or 'The Broad Bean Sermon,' in a strong sense of the power of ritual in everyday life and of the sacramental quality of existence. 'AImost everything they say is ritual,' he remarked of rural Australians in one of his best-known poems, 'The Mitchells.'
He left Sydney University in 1960 without a degree, and in 1963, on the strength of his studies in modern languages, became a translator of foreign scholarly material at the Australian National University in Canberra. His first volume of poems, The llex Tree (written with Geoffrey Lehmann), won the Grace Leven Prize for poetry on its publication in 1965, and in the same year Murray made his first trip out of Australia, to attend the British Commonwealth Arts Festival Poetry Conference in Cardiff. His appetite whetted by this visit, he gave up his translator's post in 1967 and spent over a year traveling in Britain and Europe. Travel had the effect of confirming him in his Australian nationalism; he was a republican who believed that Australia should throw off the shackles of political and cultural dependence, and he saw his work as helping to achieve that end.
On his return to Australia he resumed his studies, graduating from Sydney University in 1969. After that he earned his living as a full-time poet and writer. He was one of Australia's most influential literary critics.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
April 7, 2022
Moist black as sago pearls
in white Chinese tea
heads of women lovingly
watch babies grabbing
like unsteady moons
in a wading pool full
of cherry balloons.
Cushions and knees
and round toes in grass
under tropic leaves
the scented sweet
skin glazed in sweat —
all snapped from above in
the aqueous ovarian.
Read
June 13, 2013[Copy borrowed from the library.]
In Taller When Prone, Les Murray’s poems are the notes of a polyglot world-traveler with one eye on the mausoleum and the other on the outsider. He enfolds a wide breadth of time and place into one poetry, writing the rural pastoral and the “sky-bridges of Metropolis” as neighbors in “dream countries for surplus people” (“Reading by Starlight”). As a poet-God, he is distanced from but focused on the crowd. Sometimes, it is as if Murray himself is “executing arm-geometry” (“Definitions”), with his lines stiff and more musical when read silently. At other times, he writes with compassion that I am told is distinct from much of his earlier work. This shift in tone is especially clear in the stories of mistaken identity. In “Fame,” for instance, a first-person speaker who readers will hope is Murray himself is taken for a famous writer of cookbooks. Similarly, in “Nursing Home,” the central character, “a lady / who has distilled to love,” sits “holding hands / with an ancient woman / who calls her brother and George / as bees summarise the garden” (Murray’s spelling). More than the slightly longer, experimental poems of Taller When Prone, these anecdotal narratives show what Murray says in “The Conversations,” that “a fact is a small compact faith.” More than his dedication of Taller When Prone to “The glory of God,” they position the book as prayer.
As a newcomer to Les Murray, I find it helpful to consider the poet in very words he has chosen to describe his far-reaching world of small prayers. Borrowing from his opening poem, “From a Tourist Journal,” it can be said that the Australian’s work stands “In its precinct of liver stone, high / on its dais;” indeed, “the Taj seems bloc hail.” Taller When Prone, as many critics have said, is lesser in scale. But, the collection is nonetheless “held aloft” with the same “liverwurst mortar” and other such turns of phrase that are fabled of the Murray canon, and I believe the now 74-year-old poet when he says: “I have not left the Taj Mahal.”
In Taller When Prone, Les Murray’s poems are the notes of a polyglot world-traveler with one eye on the mausoleum and the other on the outsider. He enfolds a wide breadth of time and place into one poetry, writing the rural pastoral and the “sky-bridges of Metropolis” as neighbors in “dream countries for surplus people” (“Reading by Starlight”). As a poet-God, he is distanced from but focused on the crowd. Sometimes, it is as if Murray himself is “executing arm-geometry” (“Definitions”), with his lines stiff and more musical when read silently. At other times, he writes with compassion that I am told is distinct from much of his earlier work. This shift in tone is especially clear in the stories of mistaken identity. In “Fame,” for instance, a first-person speaker who readers will hope is Murray himself is taken for a famous writer of cookbooks. Similarly, in “Nursing Home,” the central character, “a lady / who has distilled to love,” sits “holding hands / with an ancient woman / who calls her brother and George / as bees summarise the garden” (Murray’s spelling). More than the slightly longer, experimental poems of Taller When Prone, these anecdotal narratives show what Murray says in “The Conversations,” that “a fact is a small compact faith.” More than his dedication of Taller When Prone to “The glory of God,” they position the book as prayer.
As a newcomer to Les Murray, I find it helpful to consider the poet in very words he has chosen to describe his far-reaching world of small prayers. Borrowing from his opening poem, “From a Tourist Journal,” it can be said that the Australian’s work stands “In its precinct of liver stone, high / on its dais;” indeed, “the Taj seems bloc hail.” Taller When Prone, as many critics have said, is lesser in scale. But, the collection is nonetheless “held aloft” with the same “liverwurst mortar” and other such turns of phrase that are fabled of the Murray canon, and I believe the now 74-year-old poet when he says: “I have not left the Taj Mahal.”
March 11, 2012
Australia's premiere living poet, Les Murray, obviously enjoys his own erudition and wit, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's an enjoyment of the English language, an embrace of formal poetry. Murray's poems are generally precise and spiky, with a generous dose of humanity. His native terrain (dingoes and eucalyptus) may seem exotic to American readers. There are a few real keepers in this collection, like "King Lear Had Alzheimer's" and the short poem "Fame."
Currently reading
March 4, 2013Den australienske diktarens bok fick jag som present. Han var för mig okänd, men läser gärna hans dikter. Ett exemple:
Krokodil
Polisbilen med sin rutiga blåvita
söm av tänder längs sidan
ligger på lur som en långkäftad
platt hund vid sidan av trafikfloden.
Krokodil
Polisbilen med sin rutiga blåvita
söm av tänder längs sidan
ligger på lur som en långkäftad
platt hund vid sidan av trafikfloden.
March 27, 2012
Favorites:
Nursing Home
Science Fiction
The Suspected Corpse
High-speed Bird
Nursing Home
Science Fiction
The Suspected Corpse
High-speed Bird
December 3, 2017
Bracketed by two (almost) elegaic poems, this collection seems more consciously concerned with mortality and our journeys through the world, and through our own and each others' lives, than Murray's earlier work. Admittedly, the first poem, "From a Tourist Journal" is only elegaic via the implication of its subject, as a tourist views,
through haze,while the final poem pictures a widow finalising her bootmaker husband's last repair jobs,
perfection as a factory making depth,
pearl chimneys of the Taj Mahal
Kneeling up in Mediterranean black,In between are several poems written in memoriam. It's never morbid though and as always Murray's language is often playful, sometimes raw and earthy, and sometimes it rises from the page as prayer.
reaching down the numbered parcels
as if returning all their wedding gifts.
July 17, 2025
This book was not bad per se but just not for me which is sad bc I love exploring poetry from different areas. Ultimately I just felt locked out of his poems bc it felt like a lot of knowledge of Australia was needed (slang, regions, history etc). And while often I would say that is the readers job to investigate, with these poems I honestly didn’t even know WHAT to investigate, and what was slang or history vs a metaphorical daydream of some emotion. Overall, even if I don’t understand all the “what” of a poem completely, I can often still understand the “why” of the emotion/idea. But everything here just felt like a wall I couldn’t scale. Was very surprised to learn he’s won both a T. S. Eliot award and a Queens Gold Medal. Perhaps you just have to be Aussie to know 🤷🏼♀️.
April 26, 2024
I was a little disappointed by these poems. I am usually pretty good at understanding what poems means, I quite like metaphor heavy stuff. But honestly.. 80% of these poems I had no idea what he was talking about 🫢 it is mostly bush poetry, very environmental, not much about feelings.
One nice line: “Many fear their phobias more than than death”
My favourite poems were:
Nursing home,
What survives, survives this
Eucalyptus in Exile
Reading by starlight
I would read one poem or two at night and it lasted me about a month.
One nice line: “Many fear their phobias more than than death”
My favourite poems were:
Nursing home,
What survives, survives this
Eucalyptus in Exile
Reading by starlight
I would read one poem or two at night and it lasted me about a month.
April 12, 2023
… what?
no seriously, what did i just read?
maybe i’m dumb but, this made no sense whatsoever. i don’t know what to think but, i disliked this a great amount.
everything was confusing and it wasn’t even poetry at times??
sometimes we need to just conceal our thoughts and never allow them to reach publishing ever again.
no seriously, what did i just read?
maybe i’m dumb but, this made no sense whatsoever. i don’t know what to think but, i disliked this a great amount.
everything was confusing and it wasn’t even poetry at times??
sometimes we need to just conceal our thoughts and never allow them to reach publishing ever again.
December 30, 2018
Solid and thought provoking, as poetry can be. “After three months, he could only generalize, and had started smiling.” - The Suspect Corpse.
April 1, 2021
I always find something new when I return to Murray's poems. There is no such thing as borrowing his books: you've got to return to his lines.
Read
October 23, 2021“The Beginning is a steady white sound”
May 14, 2016
Actual Rating: 4.75 stars
This is my favorite of the Les Murrary books I have read so far. It bears all the lyrical hallmarks of his earlier work and still encapsulates an Austrailian blue-collar ethos in a smooth, witty, and intelligent manner. The poem I thought was the best was "King Lear Had Alzheimer's", which sets all of humanity in "the great feral novel" which is "published, not written". This poem is clever, smart, and fascinating--I have every intention of beginning work on a paper dealing with it and (hopefully) its interactions with Shakespeare's King Lear in the next week or two and then finishing it once I have read Lear. I also particularly enjoyed "Our Dip in the Rift Valley" ("We never heard what my mate heard / descending to the Dead Sea by bus: / a jet fighter far below him / streaking north Gomorrah and SDOM!") and "Infinite Anthology" (
Murray's work is deeply hopeful, certain of the potential for human improvement even as he acknowledges the oppression of the working class within society. His poems are honest and mostly direct (although I preferred the pieces that needed a little more careful examination to open up into meaning--which bears out my general relationship with much poetry), making them beautiful explorations of the particular situation of working-class Australia. The vernacular was less jarring in this work than in some of his others, but I don't know it there was less of it or if, on the third book I've read, I'm starting to learn more of his Australian colloquialisms.
This is my favorite of the Les Murrary books I have read so far. It bears all the lyrical hallmarks of his earlier work and still encapsulates an Austrailian blue-collar ethos in a smooth, witty, and intelligent manner. The poem I thought was the best was "King Lear Had Alzheimer's", which sets all of humanity in "the great feral novel" which is "published, not written". This poem is clever, smart, and fascinating--I have every intention of beginning work on a paper dealing with it and (hopefully) its interactions with Shakespeare's King Lear in the next week or two and then finishing it once I have read Lear. I also particularly enjoyed "Our Dip in the Rift Valley" ("We never heard what my mate heard / descending to the Dead Sea by bus: / a jet fighter far below him / streaking north Gomorrah and SDOM!") and "Infinite Anthology" (
Gross-motor--co-ordination as a whistle subject) which carries a distinctive closeness to the sense of people that Murrary tries to capture in his lyrics and narratives.
audiation--daydreaming in tunes
papped--snapped by paparazzi
whipping-side--right-hand side of a convict or sheep
hepcat, hip ( from Woolf hipip-kat, one who knows the score)--spirit in which modernist art goes slumming
instant--(Australian) Nescafe
ranga--redhead
Creators of single words or phrases are by far the largest class of poets. Many ignore all other poetry.
Murray's work is deeply hopeful, certain of the potential for human improvement even as he acknowledges the oppression of the working class within society. His poems are honest and mostly direct (although I preferred the pieces that needed a little more careful examination to open up into meaning--which bears out my general relationship with much poetry), making them beautiful explorations of the particular situation of working-class Australia. The vernacular was less jarring in this work than in some of his others, but I don't know it there was less of it or if, on the third book I've read, I'm starting to learn more of his Australian colloquialisms.
July 25, 2016
This collection was my introduction to Australian poet Les Murray. It features a selection of his work with German translations by Margot Lehbert on facing pages. Even though English is my native language, there were times when it was helpful to see how the translator, who had the benefit of explanations from Murray, rendered particularly challenging phrases. Murray’s poetry is tied to the Australian landscape, but he is no sentimental pastoralist, finding place for machines and convicts in his depiction of how the last continent was tamed.Typically for lyric poetry, the language is compact, the words chosen at time arcane. But when a poem unfolded itself to me — sometimes after the third or fourth reading — it offered keen observation and hard-won insight.
November 18, 2016
A writer with command of the language.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews