The very notion of celebration poses a great difficulty to define, especially in the context of poetry. But certain parameters may be found to show that a particular poem celebrates this or that thing, this or that idea.In a way, all great poetry has been a celebration of some kind. The ancient Hindu scriptures, the Vedas, we may recall, have been celebratory in the main: the Vedic poets, or seers (as they actually were) celebrated objects, manifestations and powers of Nature.Their celebration was based not on ignorance but on knowledge not on observation but on realisation. Thus, the Vedic poet "realises the Supreme Entity manifesting itself in the form of the phenomenal world... he is an individual eulogizing the universal. But the seer is not an individual: he is a universal being; he realises and visualises that the phenomenal world is identical with the Transcendental Being...". (B. R. Yadav, The Evolution of Urvasi, 5)
Dennis Haskell points out that "Murrays poetic stance is the unfashionable one of a bard for the human tribe, especially the Australian segment of the tribe”. In his article ‘A Folk Inferno’ included in Blocks and Tackles, Murray says, "Two features of the celebratory mode in poetry which occur to me are refusal of alienation and a species of humility."
Refusal of alienation amounts to complete identification of the celebrator with the celebrated. It is the total involvement and participation of the celebrators being in the celebration itself.A species of Humility amounts to the complete surrender of the celebrator to the celebrated which without humility cannot be achieved at all.This humility involves a realisation of a sense of littleness in the celebrator along with a realisation of the sense of greatness of the thing he is celebrating.
Murrays poetics seems to bear the influence of RudolfOttos theory of the numinous as propounded in his Ideaof the Holy wherein he states how a human being canattain the realisation of the Holy. In the presence of theHoly, the "human being becomes conscious of his ownnothingness" and with a feeling of "creature-consciousness," he becomes aware of the "holy" thatwhich overpowers while it charms. From this awareness ofones nothingness emerges what Murray himself calls," aspecies of humility".
The poetry of celebration is the poetry of devotion, in a way. And the poetry of devotion is the poetry of faith in its own right.But what sort of faith and faith in what?The answer is:Faith in certain fundamentals of life, in such splendid notions as there is some glory and hence some significance in certain things of life and nature which need to be eulogised and celebrated in art. Something similar Murray does in his poems of celebration.
The example of "Broad Bean Sermon":
Going out to pick beans with the sun high as fence tops, you find
plenty, and fetch them. An hour or cloud later you find
shirtfulls more. At every hour of daylight
appear more that you missed: ripe, knobbly ones, flashy-sided,
thin-straight, thin-crescent, frown-shaped, bird-
shouldered, boat-keeled ones,
beans knuckled and single-bulged, minute green dolphins at suck,
beans upright like lecturing, outstretched like blessing fingers
in the incident light, and more still, oblique to your notice
that the noon glare or cloud light or afternoon slants will uncover...
Peter Porter says:The poem is a hymn of praise to the overlooked, to the glories which preoccupied mankind tends to miss.One is reminded of Wordsworths "Daffodils." But the poem is not Wordsworthian since it is not "a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings." Rather, it involves an inflow of the poets being which leads to his participation in each twisted gesture of the beans. It does not seem to involve any play of what the romantics call imagination or fancy. It involves insight and, therefore, it is not Wordsworthian, but Vedic. Like the Rishis of the Vedic hymns, Murray discovers and celebrates the beauty of nature as it is. While imagination creates, insight discovers.