Synopses & Reviews
Yet my eye is drawn once again,Almost against its wishes,
To the figure in the shadows,
Willowy, and clean-shaven,
As if he simply wandered in
Between mending that fuse
And washing the breakfast dishes.
--from "The Bearded Woman, by Ribera"
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 and recreating the business of poetry. The thirty-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.
Review
Thirty years of work from "the most significant English-language poet born since the second world war --
The Times Literary Supplement
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 wife, the novelist Jean Hanff Korelitz, and their two children in New Jersey, and teaches at Princeton University. In 1999, he was elected Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford.