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Recourse to the Wilderness single work   poetry   "Towards the end of the long Australian peace"
  • Author:agent Les Murray http://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/murray-les
Issue Details: First known date: 1969... 1969 Recourse to the Wilderness
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Notes

  • After its appearance in The Weatherboard Cathedral and the 1976 Selected Poems, this poem is combined with 'The Wilderness'. All subsequent appearances are of the combined version which has dedication : For Peter Barden

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

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Related Works

The Wilderness i "Penury in Sydney had grown stale", Les Murray , 1969 single work poetry
— Appears in: The Weatherboard Cathedral 1969; (p. 32-33) The Penguin Book of Australian Verse 1972; (p. 441-442) Selected Poems : The Vernacular Republic 1976; (p. 21-22) An Anthology of Commonwealth Poetry 1990; (p. 107-108)
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Works about this Work

Australia - the Space that Is Not One : A Literary Approximation Gerhard Stilz , 2007 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australia : Making Space Meaningful 2007; (p. 27-43) 'Some dozen years ago, I rented a caravan in Adelaide for our family. It has a solid, glittering roo-bar in front and a prison-like wire-grating on the windscreen, fragmenting our view of the wide landscape into little safe squares. When we picked up that impressive vehicle, the rental manager routinely cautioned us that we should by all means stay on sealed roads, and he asked, just to make sure, "Are you going anywhere north of Port Augusta?" - "Yes," we said, "we would like to travel up to Alice and the Red Centre." - "Stuart Highway," he said, "but watch out, there's everything different there, you can get lost in no time, and you never know..." - "Know what?" we were about to ask, but that seemed too much of a sophistry in exchange for the goodly advise given by this good man, who did not look like a philosopher . Though a philosopher of sorts he may have been, following the thought-lines laid out through centuries of coping with dark and ill-defined spaces.' (Author's abstract)
The Politics of Emotion Nathan Hollier , 2007 single work criticism
— Appears in: Overland , Winter no. 187 2007; (p. 26-32)
Folie, Topography and Family in Murray's Middle-Distance Poems Christopher Pollnitz , 2001 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , October vol. 20 no. 2 2001; (p. 43-63) The article demonstrates that Murray's poems "of more than one or two pages but less than fifty or a hundred" have "modes and preoccupations in common: they are topographical poems in which the protagonist moves through a landscape observing and reflecting; or they are family memoirs and chronicles; or ... they are a combination of both" (p.43). The author also examines Murray's sympathy for the "Foucaultian crew of social outsiders ... marginalised by folie" (p. 49), which he sees as an energising force in the most successful of these poems.
The Politics of Emotion Nathan Hollier , 2007 single work criticism
— Appears in: Overland , Winter no. 187 2007; (p. 26-32)
Australia - the Space that Is Not One : A Literary Approximation Gerhard Stilz , 2007 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australia : Making Space Meaningful 2007; (p. 27-43) 'Some dozen years ago, I rented a caravan in Adelaide for our family. It has a solid, glittering roo-bar in front and a prison-like wire-grating on the windscreen, fragmenting our view of the wide landscape into little safe squares. When we picked up that impressive vehicle, the rental manager routinely cautioned us that we should by all means stay on sealed roads, and he asked, just to make sure, "Are you going anywhere north of Port Augusta?" - "Yes," we said, "we would like to travel up to Alice and the Red Centre." - "Stuart Highway," he said, "but watch out, there's everything different there, you can get lost in no time, and you never know..." - "Know what?" we were about to ask, but that seemed too much of a sophistry in exchange for the goodly advise given by this good man, who did not look like a philosopher . Though a philosopher of sorts he may have been, following the thought-lines laid out through centuries of coping with dark and ill-defined spaces.' (Author's abstract)
Folie, Topography and Family in Murray's Middle-Distance Poems Christopher Pollnitz , 2001 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , October vol. 20 no. 2 2001; (p. 43-63) The article demonstrates that Murray's poems "of more than one or two pages but less than fifty or a hundred" have "modes and preoccupations in common: they are topographical poems in which the protagonist moves through a landscape observing and reflecting; or they are family memoirs and chronicles; or ... they are a combination of both" (p.43). The author also examines Murray's sympathy for the "Foucaultian crew of social outsiders ... marginalised by folie" (p. 49), which he sees as an energising force in the most successful of these poems.
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Last amended 14 Nov 2002 10:09:47
Subjects:
  • South Australia,
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