It has been the fate of many poets to find that the world is at once too much and not enough, to be driven to suicide and madness, or to the creation of hermetic works or mythologies, secondary worlds that overlay or displace the unaccommodating original. We might say that Murray’s Catholic faith serves as a mythology whose scope he sees as requiring no adjustment. What we definitely can say is that the world Murray renders is close at hand even for the remotest reader. It is completely lived in. It is handled, worked, scented, mapped, celebrated, lamented, and its people honoured in both presence and memory. Murray’s way is not the only way, but it is a wonderful achievement.
— Sean O'Brien. My review of Murray’s New Selected Poems is here.