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Cover image courtesy of publisher.
y separately published work icon Numb and Number selected work   poetry  
Issue Details: First known date: 2019... 2019 Numb and Number
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Numb and Number collects together poems written between 2011 and 2019. At its core is a confronting sequence of confessional poems which arises from depression and includes poems on the death of the poet’s mother. It also includes a number of narrative poems which range from a long poem in the voice of the former boy convict George Bruce in 1811 to a meditation on historical contingency in From a Train in Connecticut and some satirical poems such as Ode to Australia’s Most Ambitious Poet and Homecoming, which satirises Australians’ current fetish for travel. 

The emotional range of this collection is remarkable, and the formal variety is equally intriguing, making this a long-awaited addition to this major poet’s oeuvre.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Exhibitions

17459935
17457142

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Glebe, Glebe - Leichhardt - Balmain area, Sydney Inner West, Sydney, New South Wales,: Puncher and Wattmann , 2019 .
      image of person or book cover 1479212973785876851.jpg
      Cover image courtesy of publisher.
      Extent: 80 p.p.
      Note/s:
      • Published May 2019.

      ISBN: 9781925780383 (pbk)

Works about this Work

David Musgrave : Numb & Number Martin Duwell , 2020 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Poetry Review , no. 15 2020;

— Review of Numb and Number David Musgrave , 2019 selected work poetry

'On its back cover, Numb & Number describes itself as “a kind of clearing” containing poems which “open up, sometimes painfully, sometimes joyfully, what it is to be in the world”. The poems will, in other words, clear away many of the obstacles to a more open, expressive poetry. But there is also a sense that this book is, perhaps, itself a “clearing house”, a collection of disparate pieces which need to be published to clear the decks for other projects. And Musgrave seems attracted to projects which are more complicated than a simple collection of individual poems. His 2016 book, Anatomy of Voice, is a remarkably ornate, almost baroque, construction “dealing with” the death of a beloved mentor but using among its structural props, Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy and the emblem books of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. (As well as this, there is the fascinating experience of “auditory hallucinations” in which the mentor’s voice revisits from the past.) I mention this to make the point that there is a strong drive in Musgrave’s poetic imagination towards more complex structures than are implied in a conventional collection such as Numb & Number. It’s a book, which, for whatever reason, has a slightly rawer quality – in construction as well as in the individual poems – than both the highly structured ones and also previous works such as Phantom Limb and Concrete Tuesday.' (Introduction)

The Place of Poetry and the Poetry of Place James Antoniou , 2019 single work review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 2 August 2019;

— Review of Empirical Lisa Gorton , 2019 selected work poetry ; Numb and Number David Musgrave , 2019 selected work poetry
David Musgrave : Numb & Number Martin Duwell , 2020 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Poetry Review , no. 15 2020;

— Review of Numb and Number David Musgrave , 2019 selected work poetry

'On its back cover, Numb & Number describes itself as “a kind of clearing” containing poems which “open up, sometimes painfully, sometimes joyfully, what it is to be in the world”. The poems will, in other words, clear away many of the obstacles to a more open, expressive poetry. But there is also a sense that this book is, perhaps, itself a “clearing house”, a collection of disparate pieces which need to be published to clear the decks for other projects. And Musgrave seems attracted to projects which are more complicated than a simple collection of individual poems. His 2016 book, Anatomy of Voice, is a remarkably ornate, almost baroque, construction “dealing with” the death of a beloved mentor but using among its structural props, Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy and the emblem books of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. (As well as this, there is the fascinating experience of “auditory hallucinations” in which the mentor’s voice revisits from the past.) I mention this to make the point that there is a strong drive in Musgrave’s poetic imagination towards more complex structures than are implied in a conventional collection such as Numb & Number. It’s a book, which, for whatever reason, has a slightly rawer quality – in construction as well as in the individual poems – than both the highly structured ones and also previous works such as Phantom Limb and Concrete Tuesday.' (Introduction)

The Place of Poetry and the Poetry of Place James Antoniou , 2019 single work review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 2 August 2019;

— Review of Empirical Lisa Gorton , 2019 selected work poetry ; Numb and Number David Musgrave , 2019 selected work poetry
Last amended 5 Feb 2019 10:08:09
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