It is a moving and powerful reminder of how well poetry can bring the history of a place to life,and just how urgent this is in somewhere such as Australia. You come away fromRoyal Park admiring its scope and learning,and while the wordiness and sheer density of quotations sometimes threaten to overwhelm the poetic authority,it is always rich,and occasionally enlivened by bursts of crisp dialogue.
Numb and Number by David Musgrave.Credit:
Empirical is unified with a compelling obsessiveness,by strange and disparate motifs. Light is at the centre of Gorton's poetry:"seedheads shake out light",fields are"wide with light",fish track light – everything tracks light.
Illumination is also integral toCrystal Palace,the second section,as in these sumptuous lines:"…copper palm trees aflame/ with the sound of bells—their long canals flooded with light—/ streets narrowing back to that vanishing point,behind the/ houses,where love feasts on itself…"
This section zooms out and broadens the poet's preoccupation with the legacy of colonialism. The history seems almost more tangible than the sense of place,and some of these later pieces such as the Rimbaud poems andLife Writing showcase Gorton at her most virtuosic. The latter focuses on Coleridge'sKubla Khan,and the peerless rhythm of that poem seeps into hers,whileMirror,Palacehas parallels with that excellent Western Australian poet Tracy Ryan.
Gorton is right to sacrifice the formal intensity of her earlier work for the riddling invention ofEmpirical – an important voice is breaking through here:assured,polyphonic and,for all its quietness,visionary.
David Musgrave'sNumb and Number is just as variegated a work and also begins with walking. InCoastline, a flâneur walks along a clifftop,the psycho-geography of his musings no less extensive than Gorton's – though these poems are more buoyant,inflected with a misanthropic humour. We end with Zeno's paradox being applied to love,rather beautifully:"But I wasn't frustrated – au contraire – I was fascinated:/ for love,like every coastline,properly considered,is infinite."
On the whole,these verses have a fluency and abundance,leaping from one honeyed image to another. If John Tranter was right when he suggested of Sapphics that"anyone used to English/ finds it a bastard"thenHomecoming,an incisive survey of contemporary Australia in almost perfect Sapphic stanzas,is all the more remarkable.The Narcolept, which tenderly describes a woman (based on Musgrave's mother)"beached by an ocean of palsied sleep"seems destined to become a classic,while the deliciousLines in Lviv,formerly Lvov,formerly Lemburg,near Limbo recall the Roman satirist Juvenal.
And it is clear that the poet's apocalyptic pessimism comes from a deep ecological concern:"Sky,receive our immolation –/ the liquid states of the fossil nation;/ receive into your greenhouse layer/ the vanity of these,our prayers."
There is an enormous range on offer,and the collection is worth reading for these moments of realised maturity and humour,which are entirely appropriate in a poet as accomplished and acclaimed as Musgrave.