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The Drift of Things single work   poetry   "Things, Berkeley says, are the language of God,"
Issue Details: First known date: 2002... 2002 The Drift of Things
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Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Afterimages Robert Gray , Potts Point : Duffy and Snellgrove , 2002 Z947827 2002 selected work poetry prose Potts Point : Duffy and Snellgrove , 2002 pg. 52-60
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Cumulus : Collected Poems Robert Gray , St Kilda : John Leonard Press , 2012 Z1893435 2012 selected work poetry 'This book is a landmark in Australian poetry. For Cumulus, Robert Gray has chosen all he wishes to retain from his eight volumes of poetry, some of it considerably and significantly revised. He has included here a new book, "Nameless Earth", not previously published in Australia.

    'Gray has been a daring and original experimenter in the free verse line, and also at times with traditional forms. Equally, his work is notable for its frequent, uncanny rightness in the creation of images. His thinking shows a remarkable fluency in both Eastern and Western philosophies (Gray has referred to himself as a Buddhist heretic). These are all modernist pathways, and this poetry negotiates them with a lucid, classical temper.

    'Most striking is an ever-alert immediacy—a perception and reflectiveness in the fluid moment. Whether through his sensuous language or his powerful engagement with ideas, Gray's poetry continually opens us to a fresh involvement with the physical world.' (From the publisher's website.)
    St Kilda : John Leonard Press , 2012
    pg. 260-265

Works about this Work

Not so Much As a Thought : Poetry and Philosophy Brook Emery , 2014 single work criticism
— Appears in: Axon : Creative Explorations , July vol. 4 no. 1 2014;
'‘Not So Much a Thought’ explores the real or professed dichotomies between thought and feeling, mind and body, the personal and the universal to consider the general relationship between philosophy and poetry. Beginning with Brook Emery’s own poetry and broadening to consider the views of Romantic and modern poets (Wordsworth, Coleridge, Wallace Stevens, Robert Gray), literary critics (Samuel Johnson, Marjorie Perloff, Hank Lazer) and philosophers (Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty) it argues that philosophy and poetry are not antagonistic, as has often been assumed, but that they are different ways of thinking and saying. It concludes that a poem is inevitably a form of reasoning even if it does not employ, in Heidegger’s phrase, ‘the logic of calculating reason’. ' (Publication abstract)
A Hymn to the Optic Nerve : The Poetry of Robert Gray Jeffrey Poacher , 2003 single work criticism
— Appears in: Heat , no. 5 (New Series) 2003; (p. 223-229)
A Hymn to the Optic Nerve : The Poetry of Robert Gray Jeffrey Poacher , 2003 single work criticism
— Appears in: Heat , no. 5 (New Series) 2003; (p. 223-229)
Not so Much As a Thought : Poetry and Philosophy Brook Emery , 2014 single work criticism
— Appears in: Axon : Creative Explorations , July vol. 4 no. 1 2014;
'‘Not So Much a Thought’ explores the real or professed dichotomies between thought and feeling, mind and body, the personal and the universal to consider the general relationship between philosophy and poetry. Beginning with Brook Emery’s own poetry and broadening to consider the views of Romantic and modern poets (Wordsworth, Coleridge, Wallace Stevens, Robert Gray), literary critics (Samuel Johnson, Marjorie Perloff, Hank Lazer) and philosophers (Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty) it argues that philosophy and poetry are not antagonistic, as has often been assumed, but that they are different ways of thinking and saying. It concludes that a poem is inevitably a form of reasoning even if it does not employ, in Heidegger’s phrase, ‘the logic of calculating reason’. ' (Publication abstract)
Last amended 18 Feb 2013 13:09:12
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