A thought with Les Murray

Last Tuesday evening I had the pleasure of hearing an established Poet share some of his work at a reading in his honor. Les Murray is a one of the five authors in the distinguished writers series, and the first to share poetry. I was especially looking forward to hearing his work because poetry my most favored form of expression over the past year. Though I had never heard of Murray, I did some quick googling of him hours before the event (ok I looked him up on wikipedia) and found great reviews of his work, the site claiming that he is regarded as "the leading Australian poet of his generation." The more I read about him, the more respected he became to me as a writer, learning of his endless rewards and recognition for his success as a poet. This sparked some genuine curiosity, as i had never head poetry from and Australian writer before.

Sadly, I wasn't wise in choosing my seat when arriving to the reading, finding a seat in the back that would make it hard for me to hear well. Though it was also Murray's thick Austalian accent that had me scratching my head as I'd try to make out the words of the poetry he chose to share.
A rather jolly man, he had an endless selection of pieces to choose from, though it wasn't until he was asked to share one from his darker times that I began to feel moved by his words, even though there were some stanzas I couldn't make out.

Following the lecture, I looked up more of his poetry and thankfully I could understand them more easily on paper. Personally, my favorite themse for poetry is nature. I adore the use of emotion though plants, trees and water. In Murray's large collection of work, I found some poems that met my fancy. I enjoied one entitles Late Summer Fired, mainly because it was simple and didn't say too muuch but rather left some room in the imagination.

Another poem of his I articularly enjoied was Music To Me Is Like Days, mainly because it spoke so much truth about the transition of music as an expressive artform to a way of promoting bad values in society. Throughout the whole poem he has a consistent flow of points to prove the theme to be true, even including some Australian tongue that, though a bit confusing, never took away from the message he was stressing.

its bodice of always-weak laces
the entirely promiscuous art
pours out in public spaces