Philip Harvey
The poem is available online but cannot be copied, so
this is a scan. The scan is of a recognisable font, that used for The New
Yorker, where the poem first appeared. Did Les Murray read incunabula in the
Fisher Library in Sydney? It seems unlikely, but who knows, maybe the
librarians permitted students to read the fifteenth century imprints in Rare
Books. Later in the poem Murray talks about open shelves, suggesting his main
occupation was working through books from the General Collection. The poem
describes the poet’s life at university, many years ago. It contains some of
the classic traits of a Murray poem: minute descriptions of surfaces and
sounds, compaction of surprise words into short spaces, self-reference coupled
with definitive statements. It is a subject he returns to frequently in his
life: the re-creation of buildings in words, with all that they may mean at the
private and public level. We encounter early his defiant assertion of being
‘bush folk’ who are somehow judged to lack the culture that libraries contain.
How Murray arrives at these uncomfortable conclusions is best left to our
imaginations, but from the start we sense that the poem itself is written to
right some perceived wrong: the poet is out to prove something to the world.
The word ‘point’ is active, so that his life was pointing towards books and
libraries from an early age, then when he’s there he comes before the points
made by power, only to notice in books the points power did not make. Murray
carries his own stuff that he’s not going let on about too early. He neatly
uses bush images to evoke the library and its contents: the roof was like a
“steep tent” and sometimes the book contents brought little return, “few grapes
for many rows.” He might be a bit of an outsider, but here he instantly feels
like an insider: the Library is home away from home. The male-female dichotomy
is on show, where by contrast with the mysterious feminine of the library, its
“stiletto heels clacking” and “lipsticked gargoyle”, the university owns the
“phallic they were going to be marked by.” Although we can afford to be amused
by this pronounced contrast, it also betrays an anxious identification with
these places. University students have some growing up to do. The gorgeous
triad “vogue, value, theory” offers the librarians a new classification scheme,
though exactly where a cataloguer determines to put each book, whether in
Vogue, Value, or Theory, is never elucidated by the poet. It’s why we have cataloguers. We imagine
young Murray being most drawn to the Value section of the Fisher Library. Verse
Seven is the overt dream verse of this Murray poem, he loves dream in a poem,
where the dreamscape quality of any large library comes into play. The concept
of there being “floors below reality” clearly appeals, as does the prospect of
“philologies with pages still uncut”. Any lover of words stares drooling, or at
least in awe, at the idea of words and their meanings still to be unlocked,
words forgotten waiting to be rediscovered: Les Murray is the kid in the lolly
shop. The puns on the word ‘rut’ are irrefutable. While the student is digging
deep into new knowledge (rut) and even getting off with the thought of so much
great material to enjoy (rutting), he also intimates that such a place could
become somewhere where he gets stuck and cannot escape, if he’s not careful (in
a rut). Libraries can be like that, but they are not unique, by any means. The
conclusion describes wittily the concerns of older library users when faced
with the digital revolution and its discontents, even its lack of content. His
nostalgia is premature, we could argue, while libraries continue to make the
books and their access a main priority. The poet would be heartened to know
that today (2015) surveys in America show that it is people under 35 who want
book libraries and search them out, one reason being they already have the
digital stuff in their hand, like an old hat. A Silicon Valley baseball cap,
perhaps. The final line is a piece of Murray cross-referencing. When
interviewed by Clive James on TV years ago, Murray proclaimed that sitting in
libraries reading was his “surf”. This is a clean joke that possibly only an
Australian could fully appreciate, living in a country where surfing is one
pastime many of us do because it brings the greatest free pleasure for the
longest time. Surfers ride the waves all day, free of care, while the poet in
his library does the same with his reading. The poet knows he doesn’t own the Fisher
Library either, it is “endowed” by the Fisher King, free for his perpetual use,
just as surfers know they don’t own the ocean. That’s the joke, man!
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