One possible explanation is his being the head of the successful poetry publisher Puncher & Wattmann from its foundation in 2005. The number of such companies in Australia can be counted on one hand; Musgrave’s is remarkable for remaining coterie-free and dependably high in quality, despite the range of its output. Another factor in Musgrave’s relative invisibility is that he is such a various poet, highly accomplished and easily able to manage both traditional forms and more ‘experimental’ ones. While some poets, like the late Les Murray or Stephen Edgar, are notable for their consistency in either viewpoint or technique, Musgrave ranges almost alarmingly widely, quietly evading any generalisation that an admiring reader might be tempted to make. As this indispensable Selected Poems makes clear, Musgrave’s variety has been present from the beginning and has not progressed in any particular direction over time. The book’s first poem, ‘Budapest’, dating from 1986, could just as well be its last, to judge from both its tone and technical assurance.

Sensibly, but not pre-emptively, the poems are arranged in three chronological sections: 1986–99, 2000–11 and 2012–20. The first, in retrospect, has something preliminary about it, but is in no way inferior to the others. The second contains several of the important poems for which Musgrave deserves to be well known. They include ‘Australian Beach Pattern’, ‘Young Montaigne Goes Riding’, ‘The Baby Boomers’, and ‘The Poet’s House’. Three of these are distinctly ambitious long poems in differing styles, while the shorter one, ‘Australian Beach Pattern’, is no less persuasive. The third section has a similar number of highly memorable poems, notably ‘Coastline’, ‘Nine Crab Barn’, ‘Waratah’, ‘The Transportation of George Bruce’, ‘Homecoming’, and ‘The Man Who Loves Policemen’.

A closer look at some poems from the second and third sections may suggest reasons for, or at least examples of, Musgrave’s success in his numerous modes. In the last section, for instance, ‘Coastline’ is an ‘end-of-relationship’ poem which cleverly balances what is arguably the same continuing metaphor for just over three pages, culminating in the remarkable line: ‘For love, like every coastline, properly considered, is infinite.’

‘Homecoming’, in turn, is radically different from ‘Coastline’ – and from Bruce Dawe’s classic poem of the same name about the Vietnam War. Who hasn’t felt Musgave’s seriously mixed emotions on touching down from overseas at what we used to call Mascot? ‘Business or first class, economy, it doesn’t matter; / pig-tailed professionals or t-shirted, unkempt and / scolding their children, they all speak the same / vulgar-demotic.’

‘The Transportation of George Bruce’ is a different world again. Five pages of long-lined octets, it’s presented in a nineteenth-century religious rhetoric all its own and is almost certainly intended as a tribute to the experiences of the author’s convict ancestors, of whom he seems understandably proud. It contains a strong whiff of colonial brutality – and, not unintentionally, passes over the Aboriginal inhabitants moving through the same landscapes. A typically vivid stanza recalls how the narrator and his fellow escapees ‘watched, from the thick part of the woods, / the police take the others away. It was raining, / the depth of winter, the sky black as loss,  / the trees of our camp aglow with the fire / which had warmed us. There had been five of us / untimely mortals plus our Judas, who was spared,  / leaving Meredith, Farr and me. The other two hanged.’

Totally different again is ‘Young Montaigne Goes Riding’, probably the book’s best-known poem. It’s an effortlessly formal accomplishment that takes us back to sixteenth-century France in a most convincing manner. Its twenty-three six-line stanzas, all rhyming abcbca, graphically embody the ebullient optimism of the young essayist and philosopher. Out for his morning ride, Montaigne is more interested in meditation and observation than in conversation. He would rather get back to his speculations and avoid the power of the king and instead enjoy himself on his own estate. ‘there is a shelf / in my circular library filled with books which say / the earth and planets revolve around the sun. / Perhaps that is the case. For every day / our fortunes change and turn around our sovereign / king. But I revolve within myself.’

Montaigne’s detached interest in society is also seen in a number of Musgrave’s other poems, particularly in ‘The Baby Boomers’, a five-page meditation on, and dramatic presentation of, the Australian generation just prior to his own. Again, like Dawe’s satire, Musgrave’s is cutting – but not without affection: ‘She can’t understand how they have suddenly grown old. / The Julie thing was at its peak when kumera was king, / pesto its prince, sun-dried tomatoes were almost de rigueur, / the currency of chic. Pediments were pastel, / “postmodern” was a seasoning she used to spice her works …’

At one level, this may seem like the fashionable chatter of its subject; at another, it’s a compassionate portrait developing from the opening line. It is also a reminder that humour has long been an essential weapon in Musgrave’s armoury, ensuring that his often complex thought processes do not outrun the average reader – who may well come to agree that David Musgrave’s Selected Poems is conclusive proof that its author is one of the most substantial and downright enjoyable poets at work in the country at the moment.