Tuning into The Sound of Imagination: David Malouf's Typewriter Music

This essay examines the archetypical and metaphysical connection between word, rhythm and imagination in David Malouf’s collection of poems Typewriter Music (2007). This illustrates starkly Panikkar’s analysis of the spirit of the Word. Panikkar underlines the important difference between what he calls Term and the Word. The Word can never be restricted to a single, determined and specific meaning. According to this reading Malouf’s use of the Word shows the power of imagination embodied in the sound and rhythm of small everyday things. Indeed, language in Malouf’s work is a multifaceted, sensuous and tentacular medium originating from a deep contact between things, people and Nature.