The essays in this book testify to the fascination of Paul Muldoon’s poems, and also to their underlying contentiousness. The contributors see Muldoon from many different angles – biographical, formal, literary-historical, generic – but also direct attention to complex moments of creativity in which an extraordinary amount of originality is concentrated, and on the clarity of which a lot depends. In their different ways, all of the essays return to the question of what a poem can "tell" us, whether about its author, about itself, or about the world in which it comes into being. The contributors, even in the degree to which they bring to light areas of disagreement about Muldoon’s strengths and weaknesses, continue a conversation about what poems (and poets) can tell us.
Author(s): Tim Kendall, Peter McDonald
Year: 2004
Language: English
Pages: 224
Title Page......Page 4
Contents......Page 6
Acknowledgements......Page 7
Notes on Contributors......Page 8
Introduction......Page 10
‘Thirteen or Fourteen’: Paul Muldoon’s Poetics of Adolescence......Page 15
Never Quite Showing his Hand: Robert Frost and Paul Muldoon......Page 35
For Father Read Mother: Muldoon’s Antecedents......Page 54
Pax Hibernica/Pax Americana: Rhyme and Reconciliation in Muldoon......Page 71
Muldoon and Pragmatism......Page 105
‘All That’: Muldoon and the Vanity of Interpretation......Page 119
Paul Muldoon’s Transits: Muddling Through after Madoc......Page 134
‘All Art is a Collaboration’: Paul Muldoon as Librettist......Page 159
Muldoon’s Remains......Page 179
Index......Page 198
