Australian poetry classics: Les Murray’s The Broad Bean Sermon is inexhaustible food for contemplation
The Broad Bean Sermon, while not his best-known poem, shows why Les Murray is considered by some to be Australia’s preeminent poet.
Les Murray, often viewed as a contradictory figure during his lifetime, was an Australian poet who held both national and international acclaim. His work frequently blended elements from various cultural registers, including regionalism and cosmopolitanism. The Broad Bean Sermon, a poem from Murray's 1974 collection Lunch and Counter Lunch, showcases his ability to create a harmonious blend of the vernacular and the erudite.
The poem's title is ambiguous, as it could refer to either a sermon about broad beans or a sermon by broad beans. One interpretation suggests that the sermon might be a religious discourse, given the poem's nine tercets structure and Murray's Catholic conversion in 1962. The poem's opening stanza juxtaposes religious and military imagery, with the beans described as a "slack church parade without belief" and "recruits in mint Air Force dacron."
This creates a sense of casualness in the description of the beans, which are calling out to be picked using the Lord's Prayer as a framework. Throughout the poem, Murray showcases his skill in weaving together seemingly contradictory ideas, such as the dynamic growth of the beans and the static nature of their stems. The poem also pays homage to poets like Walt Whitman, whose work emphasizes the extraordinary aspects of everyday life, such as the grass in Whitman's poem, "the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven."
The Broad Bean Sermon serves as an example of Murray's unique ability to engage with his surroundings and create a sense of life-and-death reality, even in the most mundane of settings.
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