Beach Burial
"Beach Burial" is a poem by Australian poet Kenneth Slessor.
It was originally published in Southerly journal in 1944, and was subsequently reprinted in the author's single-author collections and a number of Australian poetry anthologies.
The poem was written around the time of the battle of El Alamein in 1942 while Slessor was a war correspondent. It reflects his experience of seeing dead seamen being pulled from the surf and buried in the sand in graves marked with a cross bearing the words "Unknown Seaman".
Critical reception
The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature called it a "fine poem which reflects the futility of war, it expresses the bewildered pity of battle-hardened troops as they perform rough and ready but deeply-tender last rites over the sodden, nameless corpses."The Oxford Literary History of Australia stated that the poem was "notable for its formal experimentation with assonance, echo and half-rhyme."
In his commentary on the poem in 60 Classic Australian Poems editor Geoff Page noted that this "is not a poem of strident assertion; it is a poem of 'perplexity', of 'bewildered pity, rather than a song of praise to the 'cause'". He concluded that "poems rarely come more perfect than this one."
Publication history
After the poem's initial publication in Southerly it was reprinted as follows:Australian Poetry 1944 edited by R. G. Howarth The Australasian Book News and Literary Journal vol. 2 no. 7, January 1948An Anthology of Australian Verse edited by George Mackaness, Angus & Robertson, 1952A Book of Australian Verse edited by Judith Wright, Oxford University Press, 1956Poems by Kenneth Slessor, Angus and Robertson, 1957The Penguin Book of Australian Verse edited by John Thompson, Kenneth Slessor and R. G. Howarth, Penguin Books, 1958Modern Australian Verse edited by Douglas Stewart, Angus and Robertson, 1964The Age, 29 October 1966, p23The Penguin Book of Australian Verse edited by Harry Heseltine, Penguin Books, 1972Australian Verse from 1805 : A Continuum edited by Geoffrey Dutton, 1976The Golden Apples of the Sun : Twentieth Century Australian Poetry edited by Chris Wallace-Crabb, Melbourne University Press, 1980The Collins Book of Australian Poetry edited by Rodney Hall, Collins, 1981Clubbing of the Gunfire : 101 Australian War Poems edited by Chris Wallace-Crabb and Peter Pierce, Melbourne University Press, 1984My Country : Australian Poetry and Short Stories, Two Hundred Years edited by Leonie Kramer, Lansdowne, 1985Fighting Words : Australian War Writing edited by Carl Harrison-Ford, Lothian, 1986Two Centuries of Australian Poetry edited by Mark O’Connor, Oxford University Press, 1988Cross-Country : A Book of Australian Verse edited by John Barnes and Brian MacFarlane, Heinemann, 1988The Sea Poems of Kenneth Slessor by Kenneth Slessor, Briundabella Press, 1990 The Penguin Book of Modern Australian Poetry edited by John Tranter and Philip Mead, Penguin, 1991The Faber Book of Modern Australian Verse edited by Vincent Buckley, Faber, 1991Australian Poetry in the Twentieth Century edited by Robert Gray and Geoffrey Lehmann, Heinemann, 1991Fivefathers : Five Australian Poets of the Pre-Academic Era edited by Les Murray, Carcanet, 1994The Voice of War : Poems of the Second World War : The Oasis Collection edited by Victor Selwyn, Penguin, 1995The Illustrated Treasury of Australian Verse edited by Beatrice Davis, State Library of NSW Press, 1996Australian Verse : An Oxford Anthology edited by John Leonard, Oxford University Press, 1998Two Centuries of Australian Poetry edited by Kathrine Bell, Gary Allen, 2007The Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry edited by John Kinsella, Penguin, 200960 Classic Australian Poems edited by Geoff Page, University of NSW Press, 2009Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature edited by Nicholas Jose, Kerryn Goldsworthy, Anita Heiss, David McCooey, Peter Minter, Nicole Moore, and Elizabeth Webby, Allen and Unwin, 2009The Puncher & Wattmann Anthology of Australian Poetry edited by John Leonard, Puncher & Wattmann, 2009Australian Poetry Since 1788 edited by Geoffrey Lehmann and Robert Gray, University of NSW Press, 2011The poem has also been translated into Greek, Indonesian, and Arabic.