Tony Page's book is much less awkward than its title. It exhibits a wide range of interests, from China and Southeast Asia (where he has lived) to Socratic philosophy. Facing 'the quandary / of this and every day', his is a poetry that accepts uncertainties rather than disillusionment, a poetry of 'pudgy self-acceptance'. His work is highly varied in quality. Poems such as 'Island Tour in the New Asia', with its 'soft-bellied tourists white trash back home but king of the castle here', seem all too obvious, while the anonymity of 'the Vanishing Traveler' reduces the reader's potential for empathy. 'Eagle's View of the Kali Gandaki' and 'Freed at Fifty' leave the reader with nothing to do, and 'The Model to his Master, Caravaggio' doesn't add anything to our knowledge or sense of Signore Merisi. However, at his best Page's poems are balanced, considerate, and intelligent. Poems such as 'My Brother Cannot Sleep', 'Bird Never Seen', 'A Language by any other Name' (a poem about music), and 'A Long Rest in our Cemetery' are intriguing and sometimes witty.

In the fifth poem of his Headwaters (Pitt Street Poetry, $28 pb, 75 pp, 9781922080608), Anthony Lawrence mentions his 'love' of 'quiet attention to detail', and many of his poems provide just this in evocative images: an eagle and fox feed 'At the long black table / of the Eyre Highway' and his grandfather's hat carries a 'pardalote feather in its band / like a thin smear of light'. He is one of our two major writers in the interesting sub-genre of ornithological poetry: Wedge-tailed Eagles, Honeyeaters, Wompoo Pigeons, Pheasant Coucals, and numerous other birds fly or call through these poems.

In 'Ode to a Whistling Kite', Lawrence 'summons' in his mind 'the vowel-driven variousness of your calls'. He shares with Seamus Heaney an interest in the matching of language to the natural world. Unlike Heaney, Lawrence's inventiveness is not matched by self-critical awareness. It is hard to see what a poem such as 'Directions' is about, while in 'Bogong Moths' he does not really know what to do with the accumulated images of flocks of moths. 'The Deep' mentions 'the world / record for a dive, undertaken / on one breath'; similarly to 'Bogong Moths', it is a two-page poem in one sentence. These and other poems are themselves somewhat breathless. 'Touch' is a gentle, delicate poem, but its one-sentence form conveys a sense of wilfulness. His 'like' and 'as when' constructions often keep the poems going needlessly. Lawrence is unquestionably skilful but he doesn't know when to stop, so the poems often seem less about their ostensible subject than demonstrations of his own verbal skill. Similes such as 'she lowered her eyes and spoke like a fall / in barometric pressure', like the occasional vocabulary of Eliotian exoticness ('altramentously', 'rhyolite', 'caldera', 'katabatic'), seem far too clever. 'Penumbra' begins: 'Faith is an old building, its windows papered with news / and the dark suggestion of activity in the air outside / as if the words winged and expeditious had been applied / to what we pinion with caution.' Really?

It emerges from the collection as a whole that Lawrence's real subject is himself. There seems to me nothing wrong with this post-Romanticism, but Wordsworth showed much greater awareness that he was writing about the growth of a poet's mind. Lawrence's best poems are about his family, particularly his relationship with his father; there he feels less need to strain and the most frequent word in his book – 'I' – really belongs.

Geoff Page has a much greater sense of how to crystallise an issue or a single image, and his poetry is entirely lacking in self-regard. He views himself, and the world in general, with a wry humour, never despairing when others might and never really exulting. There is no push to the Romantic sublime or any belief in the illimitable individual; instead, there is an Enlightenment interest in general humanity. As in 'the city of the fortunate', the 'temper is generous / but never quite naïve'. Gods and Uncles (Pitt Street Poetry, $28 pb, 98 pp, 9781922080509) presents issues and viewpoints that will be familiar to Page's readers: the power of history, the social effects of war, his refusal of a life on the land, the value of compassion, the poignancy of death, and the improbability of God's existence. In between dealing with these large issues, Page has many humorous and acute observations on matters as diverse as entropy, apartments, the toadish, work and silly twirps (defined as smart-arses with 'breeding'). Satire is never far from his voice. The 'Twirps' poem declares, 'Sense of humour is essential', and a keen sense of humour (often directed at himself) is one of his key strengths.

Page seems to genuinely like people, with all their foibles; who else would write of 'the anonymity of cities / where all the streets are rich with strangers'? Above all, Gods and Uncles is a testament against dogmatism and moral censoriousness, whether it comes from gods, uncles, preachers, or paranoids – all those 'joyously enriching death' by arguing that 'Annihilation's not good enough' for people who disagree with them.

Page sets against this moral certitude a liberal humanism and a sense of fun. He is surely our best contemporary public poet; his poems work because of his humanity, his authorial poise, and the wit and intelligence that lie just beneath his light touch. Page's humour is serious and thoughtful, as poems such as 'Times We Didn't Know Were Final' and 'Call yourself a socialist?' make clear. His poetry is skilful and respectful of an audience, his voice reassuring even when treating tough themes. Like his 'drip-dry' shirt 'bought in '63', Page's book is 'a triumph over entropy'.