Reviews

Green Shadows and Other Poems by Gerald Murnane

blairmahoney's review

4.0

Murnane's first and only book of poems. I saw him interviewed the other night and picked up an autographed copy of this and A Season on Earth (the extended version of A Lifetime on Clouds which has also just been published). He said that when he was a young man he saw himself as being a poet but wrote unfashionable verse for the 1960s and became dejected by rejection. When he was able to get his novels published he decided that prose was his forte and stuck with that. These poems don't disabuse me of the notion that prose is the form that he excels in, but they are very interesting, especially for devotees of Murnane. The interviewer, Jason Steger, observed that the poems reveal more of the real Gerald Murnane than the novels do and I would agree with that assessment. They are all very personal and seemingly autobiographical and candid in a way that doesn't quite emerge in the novels. In terms of form, he mostly writes in regular metre, occasionally rhyming, and Larkin seems an obvious influence (he mentions Larkin in one of the poems). Here's a sample of one of the poems (that I chose for my 'poem of the day' to read to my students on Friday and that my colleague puts online after she's chosen an image to go with them):

https://medium.com/poem-of-the-day/gerald-murnane-poetic-topics-59144b9ca9c0

Although I don't think this is the height of his work, I'm glad that it's in publication, similar to his memoir Something For the Pain, as another angle on the phenomenon that is Gerald Murnane.

mcchonchie's review

funny lighthearted reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? N/A
• Strong character development? N/A
• Loveable characters? N/A
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

2.5

kingtoad's review

emotional funny reflective relaxing sad fast-paced

4.5