AustLit logo

AustLit

image of person or book cover 3902156939151224371.jpg
Cover image courtesy of publisher.
y separately published work icon An Open Book selected work   poetry  
  • Author:agent David Malouf http://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/malouf-david
Issue Details: First known date: 2018... 2018 An Open Book
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'An Open Book celebrates the power of poetry and reaffirms David Malouf as one of Australia's most celebrated and beloved writers.

'This is only David Malouf's third new poetry volume in nearly 40 years, so it is a significant publishing event. As one of Australia's greatest living poets, Malouf continues to meditate and reflect on themes of mortality and memory.

'The poems in An Open Book are attentive and evocative, vital and beautiful, revisiting and reimagining some of the key themes that have resonated with readers over his impressive career. Like the 'small comfort of light . . . as night comes on', Malouf's new poems hold close the precious and tender.

'Only a few of these poems have ever been published, so most of the collection will be completely new to readers everywhere. An Open Book will be the literary gift of the Christmas and summer of 2018. ' (Publication summary)

Contents

* Contents derived from the St Lucia, Indooroopilly - St Lucia area, Brisbane - North West, Brisbane, Queensland,:University of Queensland Press , 2018 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
Partingi"Parting, a bearable", David Malouf , single work poetry (p. 1)
Binomiali"Privacies. Tongue -and-groove", David Malouf , single work poetry (p. 3)
Kinderszenen, David Malouf , sequence poetry (p. 3-21)
Learning Curvei"From nipple", David Malouf , single work poetry (p. 4)
Eavesdroppingi"on all that a household", David Malouf , single work poetry (p. 5)
The Open Booki"My mother could read me, or so she claimed", David Malouf , single work poetry (p. 6)
Pot-hooki"An anchor against the sky's", David Malouf , single work poetry (p. 7)
The Wolf at the Doori"The chilblain and cold water", David Malouf , single work poetry (p. 8-9)
Dancing with a Gianti"Dancing with a playful", David Malouf , single work poetry (p. 10-11)
The Brisbane Linei"Thunder Mitsubishi", David Malouf , single work poetry (p. 12)
Fifth Columni"Called up out of early wartime", David Malouf , single work poetry (p. 13)
Cestrum Nocturnumi"By day idling in drab", David Malouf , single work poetry (p. 14-45)
Odd Man Outi"Noisy in twos and threes", David Malouf , single work poetry (p. 16-17)
Empty Pagei"A world leaf-green in all", David Malouf , single work poetry (p. 18)
Deception Bayi"The sun as heron. Solitary", single work poetry (p. 19)
A La Recherchei"Not souvenir", David Malouf , single work poetry (p. 20)
The Morning of the Holidayi"The morning of a holiday. Blue weeds", David Malouf , single work poetry (p. 23)
Sweet Recurrencei"Of the many delectations,", David Malouf , single work poetry (p. 24-25)
On the Move, 1968i"Did I miss something?", David Malouf , single work poetry (p. 26-27)
Aubade.com, David Malouf , single work poetry (p. 28-29)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Works about this Work

Simon Patton Reviews An Open Book by David Malouf Simon Patton , 2019 single work review
— Appears in: Plumwood Mountain [Online] , February 2019;

— Review of An Open Book David Malouf , 2018 selected work poetry
Sky News and Compost : David Malouf’s An Open Book Georgina Woods , 2019 single work essay
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , May 2019;

'The Tao master Zhuangzi proverbially dreamed he was a butterfly, flitting and feeling truly a butterfly as he went. Upon awakening, he was no longer able to discern whether he had been a man dreaming he was a butterfly, or was a butterfly now dreaming he was a man.' (Introduction)

y separately published work icon Live Recording: David Malouf on Poetry and Language Mark Rubbo (interviewer), Melbourne : Readings , 2018 23468676 2018 single work podcast interview

'Our Managing Director Mark Rubbo talks with David Malouf about his new book of poetry, An Open Book. This is a live recording from our event.' (Production summary)

[Review] An Open Book Rachael Versace , 2018 single work review
— Appears in: Southerly , December vol. 78 no. 3 2018; (p. 240-244)

— Review of An Open Book David Malouf , 2018 selected work poetry
'I know many readers and writers who feel isolated by poetry, viewing it as a complex form that is often obscure in meaning and antinarrative in structure. The work can seem inaccessible, not quite understood. David Malouf’s An Open Book proves that this aversion need not be the case.'  (Introduction)
A Door Ajar to the Future : Doubling and Dividedness in David Malouf's Poetry Judith Bishop , 2018 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , December no. 407 2018; (p. 47-48)

'It is a curious thing, and not a little moving, to see writers celebrated for their work in other genres turn in later life with renewed vigour to poetry. David Malouf, like Clive James, has avowed a desire for poetry now, as the main form of writing his expression wants to take. Certainly, its brevity has a part in this, for the best of poems can happen, if fortunate, in minutes, not months, as Malouf himself observes. Yet the cogency of poetry speaks also to an impulse to voice the essential in life and nothing but, and to do it in a way that calls on all the writer’s powers of sound and gesture and concision.'  (Introduction)

[Review] An Open Book Rachael Versace , 2018 single work review
— Appears in: Southerly , December vol. 78 no. 3 2018; (p. 240-244)

— Review of An Open Book David Malouf , 2018 selected work poetry
'I know many readers and writers who feel isolated by poetry, viewing it as a complex form that is often obscure in meaning and antinarrative in structure. The work can seem inaccessible, not quite understood. David Malouf’s An Open Book proves that this aversion need not be the case.'  (Introduction)
Simon Patton Reviews An Open Book by David Malouf Simon Patton , 2019 single work review
— Appears in: Plumwood Mountain [Online] , February 2019;

— Review of An Open Book David Malouf , 2018 selected work poetry
David Malouf : An Open Book KN , 2018 single work review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 20-26 October 2018;

'An Open Book is the fifth book of poems published by David Malouf in the past decade or so, and it is perhaps not surprising that Malouf, now in his 80s, has returned to poetry rather than continuing to labour on novels. In one poem in this collection, “Sunday Afternoon”, he presents himself as a man whose life is in “Sunday mode. The mind / idling on automatic with no need / to be occupied or coloured, having come at last / to the end”. As this suggests, An Open Book is marked by an elegiac tone. Words such as “silence” and “breath” are common, and “blessèd” (diacritic intact) appears twice.' (Introduction)

David Malouf’s An Open Book Is Poetry to Sit with Kevin Brophy , 2018 single work review
— Appears in: The Conversation , 7 November 2018;

'A new book of poetry is offered to a world of readers where very few of us have or take the time to read poetry. Most of us are skeptical about it, suspicious of it for asking of us so much of our time and attention, and possibly giving us little back but puzzles.'  (Introduction)

David Malouf : An Open Book Martin Duwell , 2018 single work essay
— Appears in: Australian Poetry Review , vol. 13 no. 2018;

'An Open Book is the third of a series of “late” books of poetry whose first, Typewriter Music, published in 2007 had been Malouf’s first book of poetry for 27 years. Malouf’s poetry has been a complex, evolving and experimental thing since his contribution to Four Poets in 1962, but has always involved an examination of the self, its history and growth, its connections to the outer world through the complementary modes of exploration and receptivity, its connections to the body, and the nature of creativity itself. These themes are present in the variegated landscape of Malouf’s creativity (it includes prose fiction, lectures, essays and libretti) but within the work as a whole these three books have a special place. The poems are less “experimental” than the poems of the middle period, such as those of First Things Last, they are smaller and, on the surface, often less ambitious. But they are easily underestimated and are, at heart, immensely compressed and complex, inviting and coaxing the reader into a poetic world that looks encouragingly straightforward, even anecdotal, on the surface but which proves to be fascinatingly complex and challenging. And the invitations are part of the style, part of Malouf’s canny invocation of shared experience marked by his use of that potent pronoun, “we”.' (Introduction)

A Door Ajar to the Future : Doubling and Dividedness in David Malouf's Poetry Judith Bishop , 2018 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , December no. 407 2018; (p. 47-48)

'It is a curious thing, and not a little moving, to see writers celebrated for their work in other genres turn in later life with renewed vigour to poetry. David Malouf, like Clive James, has avowed a desire for poetry now, as the main form of writing his expression wants to take. Certainly, its brevity has a part in this, for the best of poems can happen, if fortunate, in minutes, not months, as Malouf himself observes. Yet the cogency of poetry speaks also to an impulse to voice the essential in life and nothing but, and to do it in a way that calls on all the writer’s powers of sound and gesture and concision.'  (Introduction)

Sky News and Compost : David Malouf’s An Open Book Georgina Woods , 2019 single work essay
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , May 2019;

'The Tao master Zhuangzi proverbially dreamed he was a butterfly, flitting and feeling truly a butterfly as he went. Upon awakening, he was no longer able to discern whether he had been a man dreaming he was a butterfly, or was a butterfly now dreaming he was a man.' (Introduction)

Last amended 20 Mar 2020 11:38:16
Newspapers:
    Powered by Trove
    X