AustLit

'Yvonne Smith’s attentive study of David ­Malouf’s ‘earlier writings’ centres on the evaluation of a dominant theme running through critical commentary that his work is ‘poetic’. Dennis Haskell, for instance, describes Malouf’s ‘ideas and values’ as ‘fundamentally poetic’ and James Tulip writes that Malouf’s achievement is ‘essentially that of a poet, whether in verse or prose’.' (Introduction)