Synopses & Reviews
"Ireland"
The Volkswagen parked in the gap,
But gently ticking over.
You wonder if it's lovers
And not men hurrying back
Across two fields and a river.
Sven Birkerts has said, "It is not usual for a poet of Muldoon's years to have . . . an oeuvre disclosing significant shifts and evolutions. But Muldoon, more than most, is an artist in high flight from self-repetition and the deadening business of living up to created expectations." The body of work in Poems 1968-1998 -- a comprehensive gathering of Paul Muldoon's eight volumes -- finds a great poet reinventing himself at every turn. Muldoon's career thus far shows us a fascinatingly mutable climate in which each freshening period brings -- as his first collection was predictively titled -- new weather."
Paul Muldoon was born in Northern Ireland in 1951. He lives with his family in New Jersey, where he chairs the Creative Writing Program at Princeton University. In 1999 he was elected Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford.
A New York Times Notable Book
This diverse, impressive, and vast collectioncomprising Muldoon's first eight volumesfinds a great poet reinventing himself at every turn. "He is a shape-shifting Proteus to readers who try to pin him down," as Richard Eder has observed. "Those who interrogate Muldoon's poems find themselves changing shapes each time he does . . . authentically touched or delighted." Muldoon, whom the Times Literary Supplement has called "the most significant English-language poet born since the Second World War," situates readers in a richly mutable climate in which each period bringsas his first volume was aptly entitlednew weather.
"A massive achievement, persistently inventive at every stage."The Economist
"A massive achievement, persistently inventive at every stage."The Economist
"[Muldoon is] the dazzling, elusive (and allusive) . . . master of indirection, suggestion, diversion, and surprise."The New York Times Book Review
"The poet's poet of his generation . . . He has created one of the tumultuous and engrossing bodies of work still in progess."Lachlan Mackinnon, The Daily Telegraph (London)
"Muldoon has enfranchised a whole generation of poets, by freeing them into his own brand of linguistic euphoria. But what sets him apart from his imitators, and raises him above them, is his imaginative scope and daring . . . He is a fabulous poet."Stephen Romer, The Guardian
"Muldoon seems to me one of the five or so best poets alive; to most of Britain and Ireland, he seems the single most influential."Stephen Burt, Boston Review
"The best, most-honored Irish poet of the generation after Heaney, 'the man who could rhyme knife with fork' (as another poet quipped), Muldoon finds his collected work seeing print a few months before his 50th birthday . . . Though it includes no new poems, this big brick of a volume does make available several long-out-of-print early books, and it serves better than Muldoon's older selecteds to reveal the full range of his prodigious talents. There is the Frostian, anecdotal Muldoon of early work like 'The Big House' . . . There is the evasive, tough-guy Muldoon who wrote narrative poems, like 'The More a Man Has the More a Man Wants,' about terror and gangsters in his native Ulster. There is the brilliantly canny and understatedly moving family elegist. There is the Muldoon whose oeuvre includes all shades of romantic and erotic emotion, from sexual disgust ('Aisling') to long-married tenderness ('Long Finish'). There is the writer of serious, terse, effective political verse, the author of 100 haiku about suburban New Jersey, and the Muldoon who recreated the sonnet in his own image. And, most famously, there is the postmodern comic, who claims to be 'my own stunt double,' and who explains in another recent poem: 'A bird in the hand is better than no bread. / To have your cake is to pay Paul.' Muldoon (who now teaches at Princeton and Oxford) may yet expand his range even further; for now, the Muldoons are all here, in force and in bulk. Most readers of poetry will need to deal with them."Publishers Weekly
Review
Thirty years of work from "the most significant English-language poet born since the second world war --
The Times Literary Supplement
Synopsis
Sven Birkerts has said, "It is not usual for a poet of Muldoon's years to have...an oeuvre disclosing significant shifts and evolutions. But Muldoon, more than most, is an artist in high flight from self-repetition and the deadening business of living up to created expectations." The body of work in Poems 1968-1998 a comprehensive gathering of Paul Muldoon's eight volumes finds a great poet reinventing himself at every turn. Muldoon's career thus far shows us a fascinatingly mutable climate in which each freshening period brings as his first collection was predictively titled new weather."
The body of work in Poems 1968-1998 a comprehensive gathering of Paul Muldoon's eight volumes finds a great poet reinventing himself and recreating the business of poetry. The 30-year effort of Muldoon's career thus far, is altogether like a fascinatingly mutable climate in which each freshening period brings as his first collection was predictively titled new weather.
Synopsis
"Ireland"
The Volkswagen parked in the gap,
But gently ticking over.
You wonder if it's lovers
And not men hurrying back
Across two fields and a river.
Sven Birkerts has said, "It is not usual for a poet of Muldoon's years to have . . . an oeuvre disclosing significant shifts and evolutions. But Muldoon, more than most, is an artist in high flight from self-repetition and the deadening business of living up to created expectations." The body of work in Poems 1968-1998 -- a comprehensive gathering of Paul Muldoon's eight volumes -- finds a great poet reinventing himself at every turn. Muldoon's career thus far shows us a fascinatingly mutable climate in which each freshening period brings -- as his first collection was predictively titled -- new weather."
About the Author
Paul Muldoon was born in Northern Ireland in 1951. He lives with his family in New Jersey, where he chairs the Creative Writing Program at Princeton University. In 1999 he was elected Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford.