Poetry
Masters in Israel
Vincent Buckley · 1961
Synopsis
About twenty poems, according to the AustLit contents list, ranging from a university class to a court of law (“Late Tutorial”, “Criminal Court”), from the bedroom of a sick girl to the praise of a wife, from Ireland (“Sinn Fein: 1957”, “Walking in Ireland”) to Anzac Day; several titles refer to Christian feasts, from Pentecost to the Resurrection. The Lithuanian encyclopaedia sees in them modern culture, politics and religion, and Vincent O'Sullivan reads in them a position on belief and language.
Context
The second collection by its author, after a first book of 1954, the volume appeared in Sydney from Angus and Robertson in 1961, in fifty-seven pages. The Cairns Post and the poetry column of Meanjin reviewed it the same year; the Canberra Times praised a very scrupulous craftsman. Vincent O'Sullivan, in Westerly, sets the stance of the book against that of its author, who would later call himself an agnostic Catholic.
Who it is for
About sixty pages of poems in a controlled form, in English; no French translation.
Prizes and reception
Reviewed from the time of its publication by the press and by Meanjin, and praised for the rigour of its craft.
Sources for this page 2
The pages consulted to check this page.