"The Land's Meaning" (1962) is a poem by Australian poet Randolph Stow.
It was originally published in Australian Poetry 1962 edited by Geoffrey Dutton in 1962, and was subsequently reprinted in the author's single-author collections and a number of Australian poetry anthologies.
Critical reception
In a review of the poet's collection Outrider : Poems, 1956-1962 for The Sydney Morning Herald Gustav Cross, after quoting from this particular work, commented that "There is nothing derivative about these poems, but it is not accident that their subject-matter is sometimes the same as Patrick White's: both writers are shaping the Australian myth."
Bruce Clunies Ross, in an essay titled "Landscape and the Australian Imagination", stated that in this poem "the images of landscape and exploration combine into an extended metaphor for human isolation and the search for some sign of love, but the poem reveals the close connection in Stow's imagination between landscape and feeling, which is at the heart of his Australian writings."Mapped, But Not Known : the Australian landscape of the imagination : essays & poems presented to Brian Elliott LXXV 11 April 1985, edited by P.R. Eaden and F.H. Mares, Wakefield Press, 1986, p.240
Publication history
After the poem's initial publication in Australian Poetry 1962 it was reprinted as follows:
Outrider : Poems, 1956-1962 by Randolph Stow, illustrated by Sidney Nolan, MacDonald, 1962 Australian Letters vol. 5 no. 2 December 1962 The Vital Decade : Ten Years of Australian Art and Letters edited by Geoffrey Dutton and Max Harris, Sun Books, 1968 A Book of Australian Verse edited by Judith Wright, Oxford University Press, 1956 Poetry from Australia : Judith Wright, William Hart-Smith, Randolph Stow edited by Howard Sergeant, Pergamon Press, 1969 A Counterfeit Silence: Selected Poems by Randolph Stow, Angus and Robertson, 1969 Twelve Poets, 1950-1970 edited by Alexander Craig, Jacaranda Press, 1971 Australian Verse from 1805 : A Continuum edited by Geoffrey Dutton, Rigby, 1976 Wide Domain : Western Australian Themes and Images edited by Bruce Bennett and William Grono, Angus and Robertson, 1979 My Country : Australian Poetry and Short Stories, Two Hundred Years edited by Leonie Kramer, Lansdowne, 1985 Margins : A West Coast Selection of Poetry 1829-1988 edited by William Grono, Fremantle Press, 1988 Randolph Stow : Visitants, Episodes from Other Novels, Poems, Stories, Interviews, and Essays edited by Anthony J. Hassall, University of Queensland Press, 1990 Australian Poetry in the Twentieth Century edited by Robert Gray and Geoffrey Lehmann, Heinemann, 1991 The Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry edited by John Kinsella, Penguin, 2009 The Puncher & Wattmann Anthology of Australian Poetry edited by John Leonard, Puncher & Wattmann, 2009 Australian Poetry Since 1788 edited by Geoffrey Lehmann and Robert Gray , University of NSW Press, 2011 The Land's Meaning : New Selected Poems edited by John Kinsella, Fremantle Press, 2012 The Fremantle Press Anthology of Western Australian Poetry edited by John Kinsella and Tracy Ryan, Fremantle Press, 2017
Notes The poem is dedicated to Sidney Nolan You can read the full text of the poem in The Weekend Australian, 7 July 2012
See also 1962 in Australian literature 1962 in poetry
References