Killing the Black Dog: A Memoir of Depression by Murray, Les
Killing the Black Dog: A Memoir of Depression by Murray, Les

Killing the Black Dog: A Memoir of Depression

In 1988, shortly after moving from Sydney back to his birthplace in the rural New South Wales...
$38.83 AUD
$38.83 AUD
SKU: 9780374181062
Product Type: Books
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Author: Les Murray
Format: Paperback
Language: English
Subtotal: $38.83
Killing the Black Dog: A Memoir of Depression by Murray, Les

Killing the Black Dog: A Memoir of Depression

$38.83
Killing the Black Dog: A Memoir of Depression by Murray, Les

Killing the Black Dog: A Memoir of Depression

$38.83
Author: Les Murray
Format: Paperback
Language: English
Description

In 1988, shortly after moving from Sydney back to his birthplace in the rural New South Wales hamlet of Bunyah, Les Murray was struck with depression. In the months that followed, the Black Dog (as he calls it) ruled his life. He raged at his wife and children. He ducked a parking ticket on grounds of insanity, and begged a police officer to shoot him rather than arrest him. For days on end he lay in despair, a state in which, as he puts it precisely, you feel beneath help.

Killing the Black Dog is Murray's recollection of those awful days: brief, pointed, wise, and full of beauty in the way of his poetry. The prose text--delicately balanced between personal and informative--gives a glimpse of the imprint that depression can leave on a life. The accompanying poems show their roots in his crisis--a crisis from which, he reports toward the close of this poignant book, he has fully recovered. My thinking is no longer jammed and sooty with resentment, he recalls. I no longer wear only stretch-knit clothes and drawstring pants. I no longer come down with bouts of weeping or reasonless exhaustion. And I no longer seek rejection in a belief that only bitterly conceded praise is reliable.

Killing the Black Dog is a crucial chapter in the life of an outstanding poet.

Author: Les Murray
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 03/15/2011
Pages: 96
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.30lbs
Size: 8.10h x 5.30w x 0.40d
ISBN: 9780374181062


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 03/01/2011 pg. 79
New York Times Book Review 04/03/2011 pg. 16
New York Times Book Review 04/10/2011 pg. 26
New York Review of Books 09/29/2011 pg. 64

About the Author

Les Murray (1938-2019) was a widely acclaimed poet, recognized by the National Trust of Australia as one of the nation's treasures in 2012. He received the T. S. Eliot Prize for the Best Book of Poetry in English in 1996 for Subhuman Redneck Poems, and was also awarded the Gold Medal for Poetry presented by Queen Elizabeth II.


Murray also served as poetry editor for the conservative Australian journal Quadrant from 1990-2018. His other books include Dog Fox Field, Translations from the Natural World, Fredy Neptune: A Novel in Verse, Learning Human: Selected Poems, Conscious and Verbal, Poems the Size of Photographs, and Waiting for the Past.


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