Paul Muldoon Books

This is a new and expanded version of the original volume published by in 1892 under the title "Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry." It was subsequently re-titled, "Irish Fairy and Folk Tales," and has seen several editions from different publishers.
This edition, with an illuminating forward by Paul Muldoon, also has other additions that help the reader penetrate the sometimes dense and archaic language. If I had to choose between the original edition and this one, I would definitely choose this one. The main body of the book is identical to the original.
Both Yeats and Lady Gregory were especially concerned that the best of the tales from the Irish countryside be preserved before their main purveyors, the Shenaches (storytellers) vanished. Those collected here are a varied lot, and not all of them will appeal to every reader. That, however, does not affect their value at all, for here a way of life is preserved and we can look through a small window into the beliefs and habits of the Irish people in the days when the "Fairy Faith" was still common amongst them. It is probably best not to read the collection straight through, but rather peruse it, selecting from it that which most appeals.
Yeats's singular contribution is the dividing the denizens of the Irish Enchanted Countryside into categories: The Trooping Fairy, The Solitary Fairy, the Sociable Fairy, etc, together with Ghosts, Witches, Giants and the like. Within each "type" there are essays, songs, poems, hearsay, histories ... in short, something to appeal to every taste, as long as that taste has a goodly sampling of fancy about it.
These fairies are not the gossamer winged, luminous beings of Victorian paintings. These fairies are as likely to curse as to bless and it does not benefit the unwary or skeptical to offend them. Here are pookas, leprechauns, far darrig, Ban-Shees, and lanawn-shees.
These creatures were ever present to the Irish peasantry, and were forgotten with the industrialization of modern times. Fortunately, thanks to the efforts of Yeats and others like him, much of this world was preserved for us.
Some of the stories and poems retain their Irish intonation and syntax and may be difficult for some to follow, but patience will be rewarded; One can almost "hear" the storyteller and the bard.
This is a volume well worth going back to again and again.

In this delightful volume, first published in 1892, William Butler Yeats has collected all manner of Irish folklore (mostly short stories, with a few poems) from a wide variety sources. He has divided the works into categories as follows: the "Trooping Fairies" (fairies, changelings, and the "merrow" or mermaids); the "Solitary Fairies" (the lepracaun, the pooka - an animal spirit, and the banshee); "Ghosts"; "Witches & Fairy Doctors"; "T'yeer-na-n-Oge" or "Tir-na-n-Og" (a legendary island said to appear and disappear); "Saints & Priests"; "The Devil"; "Giants"; and "Kings / Queens / Princesses / Earls / Robbers." Yeats introduces each section with background information on the creature the stories in that category will concern. He also includes numerous footnotes of interest, making this book a valuable resource for anyone seeking to learn about the tradition of Irish folklore.

While I have given this anthology a five-star rating based on it's value as a source of information on Irish mythology, it would probably be worth only four stars for entertainment value alone. Some of the stories are very short and/or don't have much of a point, and are less interesting. These tend to serve more as testimony to the nature of a particular mythical being rather than being an actual story with a plot and message for the reader. Nevertheless, the book as a whole offers a very comprehensive look at just what defines Irish folk culture. The stories that do have a point sometimes take the form of "how things came to be this way" tales, or provide a moral lesson, etc. Many of the stories are rather dark, as that tends to be the nature of lore from this region, but there are also some lighthearted and cheerful pieces.

Despite the book having been compiled more than one hundred years ago, most of the stories are quite easy to read. Yeats makes things even more simple for the reader by making footnotes where old Irish words or phrases are used, giving us their meaning. However, there are a few stories that have been left in a more archaic form, which is distracting and a bit harder to decipher. Take, for example, the following excerpt:

". . . the minit he puts his knife into the fish, there was a murtherin' screech, that you'd the life id lave you if you hurd it, and away jumps the throut out av the fryin'-pan into the middle o' the flure; and an the spot where it fell, up riz a lovely lady - the beautifullest crathur that eyes ever seen, dressed in white, and a band o' goold in her hair, and a sthrame o' blood runnin' down her arm" (pg. 46).

I should probably make note of the fact, for those whom it might interest, that although the title page says the book is "profusely illustrated," there are actually only a few pictures. I believe only six of the over seventy stories are illustrated, and these with simple (but nice), old-fashioned line drawings in black and white. However this is not really a criticism as I view it, since I like the book for its literary content and wouldn't really care if it had no pictures at all.

One of the things I enjoy most about literature is finding connections with other works I've read, and "Irish Fairy & Folk Tales" does not disappoint in this regard. Many of the pieces are derivations of other, more common fairy tales. For instance, "Smallhead and the King's Sons" (Ghosts / pg. 194) incorporates some elements from both "Cinderella" and "Hansel and Gretel," while "The Giant's Stairs" (Giants / pg. 355) has some similarities to the story of "Jack and the Beanstalk." There are more connections like this. On the whole I found this book to be very enjoyable, and also a valuable read from a literary / academic standpoint. I'd certainly recommend it to anyone interesting in the history of Irish culture, the study of fairy tales and folklore, or both.

This absolutely charming collection of stories truly represents the best of "fairy" tales in which the fairy folk feature prominantly as well as a number of other folk beasties. WB Yeats has managed to capture all of the humor, fright, and love involved in the fairy world and it is a joy to follow him around in a world he seems to know so well.

Yeats has long been one of my favorite poets; however, I did not expect his re-telling of Irish Fairy and Folk Tales to be up to his poetry standard. With that said, let me say he does an excellent job re-telling these old stories and if you have any interest whatsoever in fairy tales or Irish Mythology, read this book. "The Trooping Fairies" and "Witches, Fairy Doctors" were 2 of my favorite chapters but overall the whole book is a delight to read. It's an easy read, some stories are funny, some are scary, but most are just entertaining. Also there are some poems mixed in with the stories which add to the story-telling. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

"Your burglaries leave no thumbprint
Mine, too, are silent
I do my best imagining at night,
And you do yours with the help of shadows.

Like actors rehearsing a play,
The dark ones withdrew
Into remote corners of the room
The rest of us sat in expectation
Of your burning oratory."

~ from Sunlight by Charles Simic

The maturity of the poems in The Best American Poetry 2005 is instantly apparent the moment you read "In View of the Fact" by A.R. Ammons. This is a deeply thoughtful collection of poems best addressed when you are in a contemplative mood. Within the pages there are many surprises, lovely conclusions and especially creative thought patterns. Sexuality and death seem to be themes throughout, but there is also humor and cleverly designed rhymes the wittiest poets must long to master.

"Ants" by Vicki Hudspith is especially comical while Mary Karr's poem about her son is especially heart-warming and leans more towards a serious realization of life's complexity within expectation. Richard Garcia's "Adam and Eve's Dog" lightens a topic most would find quite serious and Edward Field's poem of praise has a beautiful freeing conclusion with metaphorical appeal.

"If I were Japanese I'd write about magnolias
in March, how tonal, each bud long as a pencil,
sheathed in celadon suede, jutting from a cluster
of glossy leaves. I'd end the poem before anything
bloomed, end with rain swelling the buds
and the sheaths bursting, then falling to the grass
like a fairy's castoff slippers, like candy wrappers,
like spent firecrackers."
~ Beth Ann Fennelly, pg. 46

What I am most impressed by in this collection of poems, is the truthfulness and the straightforward invitation into this sincerity. There is a cleverness in the crafting of each idea (I Want to be Your Shoebox) and at times profound lessons can appear through the viewpoint of a poet who sees the world a little more intensely (The Poets March on Washington). Jane Hirshfield's "Burlap Sack" paints an image of bondage and freedom, while Linda Pastan reveals a different type of cultural freedom.

Paul Muldoon's selections also provide a consistent mood and his love for rhyme and complex sentence structures invites you into a world of poems that reveal intricate details of your own life. At times his selections are realistic and edgy with mature considerations and at other times he has selected profound moments to inspire a more heartfelt appreciation for beauty. Both ideas seem to weave together to form a painting of how life is really lived in a realistic setting, as opposed to a more romantic rendering of ideas within a dreamscape of fantasy poems. Now and then, a line in a poem is so highly significant you can read the entire poem and then suddenly awaken upon a stunning moment.

"Wanting the tight buds of my loneliness
to swell and split, not die in wanting.
It was why I rushed through everything,
why I tore away at the perpetual gauze
between me and the stinging world"
~ pg. 133, Chase Twichell

I can also highly recommend the 2006 edition of The Best American Poetry, which is enhanced with pop culture references and a distinctly contemporary mood. As with all the books edited by David Lehman, the "Foreword" is well worth reading. David Lehman's experience in the world of poetry reveals ideas that will be of great interest to anyone interested in poetry culture.

~The Rebecca Review

BAP2005 surely is a high point for the quality of the volume's poetry and the number of internet offerings included.

first class condition and prompt delivery Thank you

This is a really enjoyable take on the mystery genre -- smart and funny.

This mystery manages to be both exciting and flat-out hilarious! My kids loved it, but there's plenty here for adult readers too -- especially us fans of hard-boiled detective fiction. Strongly reccommended!

This book is a collection of 15 lectures given by Mr. Paul Muldoon at Oxford England. Each lecture is dedicated to the presentation and analyses of one poem by one poet. All of these are well know favorites: ALL SOULS' NIGHT,W.B. Yeats, THE MOUNTAIN, Robert Frost, POETRY, Marian Moore, DOVER BEACH, Mathew Arnold, etc. Muldoon's presentations are fine samples of inventiveness, good taste, hyperbole, literary allusion, daring defragmentation and impeccable research. The author's innumerable literary allusion and quotation of hundreds of other poetic fragments, turn the book into a poetic potpourri, a "Journey into June" with poetry and poets. Very entertaining.

Written by the founder of the Lake Michigan Federation and the Executive Director at the Canadian Environmental Law Association, Evolution Of The Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement is a scholarly discussion of the Canadian- American partnership regarding the Great Lakes, the negotiation behind the Great Lakes Agreement and its evolution, the transformation of the Great Lakes Regime, and more. In addition to the detailed and heavily researched survey of history that forms the main text, the entire Great Lakes Agreement of 1972 and its 1978 revision, along with copious notes, round out this down-to-earth environmental history. An excellent reference, as accessible to lay readers as well as students and professionals in environmental studies.

One of the best books out if you want to read poetry about animals through the ages.

You have poets obscure and famous poets such as G.K.Chesterton who writes about "The Donkey" who had his hour, "one far fierce hour and sweet" p73/74 and William Blake's "The Tyger" a haunting picture of beauty and violence p271, alongside old and much loved rhymes like "Goosey Gander" p 101 and "Hickory Dickory Dock" p114.

This is a glorious book that is both refreshing and nostalgic and is well worth having on your bookshelf for reference and fun.

...Than Muldoon's other recent volumes. Not to say it's an easy read. Bits of the Irish language, proverbs, Celtic legend, Japanese and native American lore, Hiberno-English, allusions and elisions packed with every poem, this collection does echo, as the publisher's blurb suggests, a bit of Muldoon's adapted state of New Jersey's forebear William Carlos Williams at times. His translations of the old Irish verse Pangur Ban and two Rilke poems show that he's skilled at rendering into solidity other voices besides the many within his own imagination tumbling forth here in typically erudite and rather daunting fashion.

Sleeve notes--inspired by on various rock albums anticipates Nick Hornby's essays on rock songs by a few years, and Muldoon's growing immersion in his American surroundings and family life makes for entertaining, if again often puzzling, explorations. This book's best read following Madoc and The Annals of Chile, for it builds upon relationships established in these previous collections, which are even more challenging than the usually briefer forays into the metaphorical and metaphysical here, one of the best of which begins the book.

"The Mudroom" casts about a heap of junk and treasure to uncover ancient Judaic archetypes within a country shed--just one example of the juxtapositions Muldoon's mind works within to create disturbing as well as enlightening scenarios that linger and jumble in the mind after you close these dense if terse pages.

Great book. Absolutely wonderful. Buy it.

(I had written a longer, more interesting review, but it was apparently lost on the web.)

An Irish Professor at Princeton, Paul Muldoon wrote a book called "Hay". Muldoon is said to be one of the most inventive poets of this day and age. Paul Muldoon seemingly is so unpredictable at times that he stirs up problems with his readers and critics. Muldoon's 90 Haiku is just an example of his unique works. Muldoon has the ability to create a poem out of anything, but instead on enlightening his readers, he tends to confuse them.

In "Hopewell Haiku", Muldoon seems to set up this piece by changing seasons in every couple haikus. He says so much in so few words. Paul Muldoon uses a vast vocabulary in "Hay" that may be unfamiliar to his average audience. Actually, having a dictionary handy is mandatory to even slightly understand some of Muldoon's works!

Muldoon excels in technique and I don't think he'd ever run out of new ways to construct and reconstruct poetry. A very noticeable style to a reader that Muldoon seems to use in a few poems is: ending every sentence in a stanza with the same word. Interestingly enough, the word has a different meaning each time (ex: "....so I learned first hand...the sleight of a hand...writing in open hand")! Another slick format that Muldoon uses in "Hay" is the use of "Hybrid Proverbs" to put together an entire poem. He some how takes all different sayings that one may have heard some time during their lifetime, puts them all together, and they make sense! This is exactly proof of why they say he's unpredictable in his style and language.

Hay has its good aspects. It's more suitable for a more advanced poet than a beginner. It's also for a person who finds pleasure from unraveling the hidden secrets of difficult material. Muldoon is a very talented, more advanced poet. Hay" is worth reading, if not to understand, then to experience the vast techniques and styles of Paul Muldoon.

I enjoyed the opportunity of hearing a reading by Paul Muldoon last spring and this semester I'm taking a writing of poetry class. I had to do a presentation on a living poet and I picked up one of his latest collections and it's like the title of this review, delightful. There are so many different styles of eccentric poems in this one collection and some that contain such obscure literary references that it invokes a sense of bewilderment and leads to a trail of website-hunting to figure out what he's talking about. But it's okay, because many of the poems can be enjoyed at face value, but if you want to dig deeper you can. He's one dang clever guy and this collection is definitely enjoyable.

Is it possible for one person to be the best American poet and the best Irish poet at the same time? Muldoon certainly lays a strong claim to both titles: his Irishness lends him a musicality far superior to that achieved by most contemporary Americans, while his American side is the source of a far-ranging brashness, an ambition, scope and post- modern adventurousness that makes many Irish poets look rather, well, staid. "Hay" is a brave and experimental volume, more Byronic than ironic (though there's plenty of both) that takes place in a mostly domestic setting. As Muldoon wanders around his house and neighborhood and reports on what passes before his eyes and through his mind, the reader is treated to a wild and ceaseless cinematic display that is at times violent, at times kooky, not infrequently nostalgic, and often reminiscent of of Borges, Rilke, or Berryman (not to mention Kurosawa, Kubrick, and Scorsese.) "Long Finish" probably is the most moving piece here, one of the best love poems of the last ten or twenty years, while "The Bangle, Slight Return" is is an intriguing crossword slash jigsaw puzzle that promises boundless entertainment and befuddlement. This book should be sold in airports, distributed free to hotel rooms . . . it's groovy, baby!

"Your burglaries leave no thumbprint
Mine, too, are silent
I do my best imagining at night,
And you do yours with the help of shadows.

Like actors rehearsing a play,
The dark ones withdrew
Into remote corners of the room
The rest of us sat in expectation
Of your burning oratory."

~ from Sunlight by Charles Simic

The maturity of the poems in The Best American Poetry 2005 is instantly apparent the moment you read "In View of the Fact" by A.R. Ammons. This is a deeply thoughtful collection of poems best addressed when you are in a contemplative mood. Within the pages there are many surprises, lovely conclusions and especially creative thought patterns. Sexuality and death seem to be themes throughout, but there is also humor and cleverly designed rhymes the wittiest poets must long to master.

"Ants" by Vicki Hudspith is especially comical while Mary Karr's poem about her son is especially heart-warming and leans more towards a serious realization of life's complexity within expectation. Richard Garcia's "Adam and Eve's Dog" lightens a topic most would find quite serious and Edward Field's poem of praise has a beautiful freeing conclusion with metaphorical appeal.

"If I were Japanese I'd write about magnolias
in March, how tonal, each bud long as a pencil,
sheathed in celadon suede, jutting from a cluster
of glossy leaves. I'd end the poem before anything
bloomed, end with rain swelling the buds
and the sheaths bursting, then falling to the grass
like a fairy's castoff slippers, like candy wrappers,
like spent firecrackers."
~ Beth Ann Fennelly, pg. 46

What I am most impressed by in this collection of poems, is the truthfulness and the straightforward invitation into this sincerity. There is a cleverness in the crafting of each idea (I Want to be Your Shoebox) and at times profound lessons can appear through the viewpoint of a poet who sees the world a little more intensely (The Poets March on Washington). Jane Hirshfield's "Burlap Sack" paints an image of bondage and freedom, while Linda Pastan reveals a different type of cultural freedom.

Paul Muldoon's selections also provide a consistent mood and his love for rhyme and complex sentence structures invites you into a world of poems that reveal intricate details of your own life. At times his selections are realistic and edgy with mature considerations and at other times he has selected profound moments to inspire a more heartfelt appreciation for beauty. Both ideas seem to weave together to form a painting of how life is really lived in a realistic setting, as opposed to a more romantic rendering of ideas within a dreamscape of fantasy poems. Now and then, a line in a poem is so highly significant you can read the entire poem and then suddenly awaken upon a stunning moment.

"Wanting the tight buds of my loneliness
to swell and split, not die in wanting.
It was why I rushed through everything,
why I tore away at the perpetual gauze
between me and the stinging world"
~ pg. 133, Chase Twichell

I can also highly recommend the 2006 edition of The Best American Poetry, which is enhanced with pop culture references and a distinctly contemporary mood. As with all the books edited by David Lehman, the "Foreword" is well worth reading. David Lehman's experience in the world of poetry reveals ideas that will be of great interest to anyone interested in poetry culture.

~The Rebecca Review

I enjoyed this book immensely. Quality entries from the usual suspects - Ashbery, Simic, Tate, Ammons - are complimented nicely by a slew of entries from lesser known poets. I won't get into each one, but I will discuss one in particular. I was most fond of Matt Yeager's narrative poem about a giant tin foil ball. It possessed a creativity that seems to me to be dwindling in most American art. You're probably saying, "a giant tin foil ball?" Trust me, this is a great work and I can't wait to see more from this young poet.

I find that the Best American Poetry is always enjoyable. Sometimes it is enjoyable because the poems astonish and delight, and sometimes it is enjoyable to hate. 2005 is surprisingly good. What one would identify as the more traditional of poetic virtues are openly on display. While certain of the poems felt gimmicky or cute, there was, running through it, an emotional intelligence and attention to the music of words that's been missing in recent volumes. This isn't surprising when one considers that its editor, Paul Muldoon, is as musically deft as any poet in the language today.

There are offerings from many of the familiars: Ashbery, Simic, Tate, Kinnell. There are also offerings from several of our great dead poets (Ammons, Justice, Bukowski), who somehow continue to be producing quality verse. This seems somewhat unfair, but perhaps poets truly are better off dead. Ammons's poem, where he mentions the flurry of death in his own life alongside other things that happen in bunches (marriages, first children) and Justice's poem about an old fisherman dancing by himself on a dock were possibly the two most moving pieces of work in the volume. Other highlights for me were Matthew Yeager's narrative poem about the huge tinfoil ball in the small city apartment (which my seven year old son also enjoyed) and Stephen Dunn's poem "Five Roses in the Morning."

Overall, I would pick this volume up.

I'd put off this work fearing its opacity. Muldoon's progressed into ever more difficult territory in his collections, and for a poet still relatively young (just over 50), he reminds me of a musical prodigy (first volume at 23) who's not fallen victim to trends, nostalgia, or predictability. I tackled these 250 poems ready for a challenge, and received one. The headings with a major Western thinker helped me in the way that Joyce's scheme aided readers of Ulysses: the titles are detached from the work--in brackets--yet need to be integrated into the poetic sequences.

Like Joyce's Homeric template, how each thinker fits into the poem below remains rather obscure to those of us lacking a knowledge of 250 big names in Western thought. Puns, wordplay, imagery, and content sometimes surfaced recognisably, but many of the names were only vaguely recalled by me or not at all. Surely a thesis awaits on their correspondences. Meanwhile, the narrative itself remains clever throughout. Its fragmentation depicts well the colonial utopian dream being shattered by Native and post-colonial realities, although I was disappointed that the whole Madoc-Mandan-"Welsh Indian" topic remained, as the subtitle perhaps indicates, a "mystery" barely acknowledged.

Muldoon's more engaging, IMHO, than his near-counterpart in age and origin Seamus Heaney, for PM possesses less of a gravitas and more intellectual playfulness in his concentration of an almost cinematic, and non-agrarian, employment of myth, action, and reaction within the mind of his characters. He's set himself a grand canvas upon which to paint his masterpiece here, and he's not so transparent that he easily exhausts close readings. Like musicians in it for the long haul, he's still improving after decades of honing his craft, and this work, while surely for a rather recondite reader, rewards and entices in its flirtatious teasing of what we can know and what remains enigmatic, a mystery despite manifest destiny and all the philosophies we can accumulate, in books or in life's own battle.

Even as a longtime fan of Muldoon's, expecting a certain amount of obscurity, I found this book-length poem unexpectedly difficult. The text is studded with obscure historical and poetic references, no doubt intentionally producing a constant feeling that one is missing some of the point. But the sheer virtuosity of the work more than makes up for it -- the profundity and humor it provokes in its reader, the formal and technical excellence, and the sheer hubristic ambition of it all. (Who writes book-length poems anymore?) Muldoon is perhaps the greatest living poet writing in English, Nobel or no Nobel. Do read this.

An Irish poet who has become, or must be becoming, an American poet does more than bridge the Atlantic with this grand work, singlehandedly with it he redefines American literature. Monticello through Lewis and Clark to Chomsky, Detrrida and Hawking, he, phrasing in its final lines, "...has sent a shiver, de dum, de dum,..." The poem's complexity pushes the sum of all Western tradition from the Classical Greeks to sinter in the American crucible. It is a poem about our history.

If glibness can be elevated to greatness, then (as critics like to say), Muldoon has no peer. But that's a big "if". I picked up this volume based on a recent New York Times article where I read that (just in case you haven't heard yet) he is a Professor of Poetry at both Oxford and Princeton, having been inducted into the former at the tender age of 20. Surely, dear reader, you must know by now the unparalleled list of professorial poets produced by Oxford & Princeton? Need I name names?

I nevertheless like Pual Muldoon's poetry. I recommend it and it's fun to read, but his book of poems from 1968-1998 could hardly be considered a string of pearls.

What you will and won't get.

His is like snapshot poetry. Don't expect extended metaphor, conceits, or any overall development in the way of imagery or narrative. His is a quick wit and quick eye. Reading his poem is like setting fire to a box of matches. There's no smoldering pathos hear. His fire leaps from matchtip to matchtip, word to word, until the whole of it goes up in an exciting little burst of flames.

His poetry has been compared to Donne, but similarities are thin. For example, Donne was singularly known for the difficulty of his metrical writing. Expect no metrical daring from Muldoon. He doesn't write by numbers. Muldoon's difficulty can be summed up, I think, by this tidy comparison. Reading Muldoon is like listening to someone else's phone conversation. You will only ever hear half the conversation.

The earlier books in this collected poems are the most accessible and, in certain ways, the more enjoyable. You'll find those matchtip lines like: "Once you swallowed a radar-blip/of peyote/you were out of your tree..." This makes for fun reading.

The book "Madoc: A Mystery", however, dating from 1990 indulges in a stellar example of poetic onanism. Clearly, the writing of Madoc brought great pleasure to the author, but I personally doubt this book will mean much to anyone not having a fetish for erudite cleverness. Clearly, the Princetion professor Muldoon is having a long distance conversation with his Oxford counterpart. You will have to wiretap if you really want to get this stuff. For example:

"[Galen]
"It transpires that Bucephalus is even now
"pumping jet
"of spunk into the rowdy-dow-dow
"of some hoity-toity little skewbald jade."

Get it? If you do, this bud is for you.

The final book "Hay", is the best of them. Even if a portion of the poems strike one as little more than deliciously worded doggerel, the fun of Muldoon's wit evens the whole of it out. "I've upset the pail/in which my daughter had kept/her five-`No, six'-snails." Substitute "reader" for "daughter" and you get the idea.

By the way, did you know he was professor of poetry at Princeton AND Oxford???

Forget Seamus Heaney, forget Galway Kinnell. Paul Muldoon is the thing. This is an excellent collection of his work. Click around here, find and read a couple of his poems, and you'll know.

If you happen to find this book torn in half in a used book shop, then buy only the first half. There you will find brilliant Muldoon. If you reaqd just that, you'll think he's the greatest Irish poet ever (or at least among the top three). I wish I could say the same for the last half.

...I really do. The common criticism of Muldoon is that his constant use of mythical/literary allusion and Irish colloquial vocabulary makes him very difficult (if not impossible) to understand. I would argue, however, that this is Muldoon's point, especially in regards to his many elegies. Muldoon himself cannot access and express the depth of his mourning, and the diffult language he exposes the reader to assures that his feeling of insufficiency is not lost on anyone else. In my view, this is a brilliant and beautiful approach to modern elegy.

All of that being said, it is impossible not to get lost in Muldoon's beautiful language and rhythm. Reading even one verse of a Muldoon poem can keep me going for a whole day. Don't read him if you're afraid of doing a little thinking, but keep in mind that not all of his allusions are meant to be understood. Just enjoy.

I first encountered Paul Muldoon when he came to my university to give a reading and a seminar talk. When I picked up a photocopied packet of his poems and started to read through them, I was confused, then intrigued, then thrilled. When Muldoon arrived a few days later for the poetry reading and the seminar discussion, I was further impressed by this wonderful man, who has a deep understanding of poetry and language.

These poems are not "easy". Many of them require multiple readings to begin to understand them (although some are quite straightforward, but these are rare). However, Muldoon's use of language, his sense for sounds, his near-obsession with rhyme, and his inventiveness are qualities so far above most other contemporary poets that, well, what can I say? He's the real thing. Today, like Geoffrey Hill, he's very well regarded in the UK, and virtually unknown in the USA. This is tragic. A century from now, the names of Hill and Muldoon will be known, and most US poets will be forgotten - but that's another topic.

If you like difficult but beautiful poetry, pick this up. If you are into pretty easy, conversational verse that you can grasp from a first reading - stay away!