Author(s): Les A. Murray

Poetry

Les Murray' s first new book since "Poems the Size of Photographs "(2002) finds him at his near-miraculous best. Where that book and the book-length poem "Fredy Neptune "(1999) were animated by Murray' s choice of a single mode of approach (the short poem, the modern epic), this one calls on his ability to write in any voice, style, and genre: there are story poems, wordplays, history-- and myth-makings, domestic portraits, and Australian landscapes (such as the one that gives the book its title). "The Biplane Houses "is evidence of a great poet in top form.