The ilex tree

Abstract

Les A. Murray and Geoffrey Lehmann are two young Australian poets whose work has recently begun attracting attention. Both write enjoyably, preferrring lucidity and clarity of image. Les Murray works from a deep attachment to countryside and the past; his earlier work is concerned largely with imagined situations and modes of existence, especially war, but more recently he has come to explore a more immediate world of his own experience, and his verse has become tenderer and more natural. Geoffrey Lehmann, on the other hand, is a poet of city and sea. He prefers legend and mask to direct lyrical statement, but his elegant surfaces conceal much in tensity of feeling. The two poets have been good friends for several years, and this book is, in part, a result of their friendship.