An Open Book

by David Malouf

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.

Genres: Poetry

94 pages, Hardcover

Published October 1, 2018

About the author

David Malouf is a celebrated Australian poet, novelist, librettist, playwright, and essayist whose work has garnered international acclaim. Known for his lyrical prose and explorations of identity, memory, and place, Malouf began his literary career in poetry before gaining recognition for his fiction. His 1990 novel The Great World won the Miles Franklin Award and several other major prizes, while Remembering Babylon (1993) earned a Booker Prize nomination and multiple international honors.
Malouf has taught at universities in Australia and the UK, delivered the prestigious Boyer Lectures, and written libretti for acclaimed operas. Born in Brisbane to a Lebanese father and a mother of Sephardi Jewish heritage, he draws on both Australian and European influences in his work. He is widely regarded as one of Australia's most important literary voices and has been recognized with numerous awards, including the Neustadt International Prize for Literature and the Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature.

Reviews

[Robert Lukins · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazingly revealing and moving collection; childhood, adult love and missing, reflection, fear, death and acceptance. A whole life it seems. Malouf somehow achieving a new height.

[Haydon · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can’t help but feel for the lonely boy in ‘Odd Man Out’ and for the man in his golden prime/ cruelly dumped and broken in ‘Pyrra’. There is loss too in the poems that trace Malouf’s travels in Europe: in ‘On the Move, 1968’, he mourns a lost love from half a century ago:

I miss it still,
and daily, as I miss you
at moments in the heat
of the pavement as I wait
in the traffic of another
city, in another
decade in another century
and have now for how long
is it?

Other poems I liked include ‘House and Hearth’ – beginning with the small household gods we live with, and page 33 next to it, the homage to the simplicities of bread in ‘The New Loaf’:

Each day delivers it
new-risen like the sun
out of centuries
of homely experiment

I also liked ‘Incident on Myrtle Street’ – about the scent of a burglar breaking into the house, and ‘The View from the Winter Palace’ from a room that knows nothing of sea-light or sea breezes. And also ‘Kite’, with Malouf’s homage to his mother lost for the afternoon/ in another century, drowned/like Ophelia in her book.
There’s lots to like in this collection.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2018/10/03/a...

[Emma Nayfie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m new to reading poetry, and this is the first collection from David Malouf that I’ve read. I found it a poignant curation of thoughts about childhood, growing older, loss, love, and reflections on ones own mortality. I don’t feel qualified to comment on the technical aspects of his writing, but his writing seemed to ease me gently into his world, and many of his poems moved me to tears. I really enjoyed this collection.

[Naomi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Often I have to be really in the mood to enjoy poetry. It is not my favourite style of book to read. I quite enjoyed this collection of poetry. I found it calming and gentle to read.

[Peter Metcalfe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great poetry with a fine emphasis on his early life and family. Kite is a favourite for me.

[Tiffany · Rating 3 out of 5]

i know nothing about poetry but i enjoyed some of them

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn’t sure how I would fare with this collection but I have been pleasantly surprised by how much I resonated with the writing and enjoyed the poems. Good stuff!

[Jeremy Limn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exiciting liminal poems that make silence want to be heard.