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.

Great book. Absolutely wonderful. Buy it.

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

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!

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!

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.

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.

Lordy, it would be ANYBODY'S best. Paul Muldoon's work has always been great but *The Annals of Chile* is a breakthrough. "Cows" and "Twice" are pitch- and picture-perfect and the intricacies and expansiveness of "Yarrow" could keep me occupied and entertained for months, but more than anything else it is the unforgettable "Incantata" that makes this book a treasure. Who knew that poets like this still existed? (Only in Ireland, I suppose -- and by the way, if you like Muldoon make sure to check out conationals like Michael Longley and Ciaran Carson. A good time is guaranteed to be had by all.)

I had the great pleasure of attending a poetry reading by Paul Muldoon at Villanova University, having never heard of the poet before. He read first a short, ironic work entitled "Why Brownlee Left" (which is included in this collection). Paul Muldoon's words rang clear and true, echoing human experience at all octaves and levels. Moved by his reading, I quickly purchased this collection and realized even further the talent of this man.

There is immense meaning and weight in his subjects, yet his verse remains unadorned and natural; he assumes no airs, he will lose no audience in puffed-up poetics.

This collection serves as a gathering of only the choicest, sweetest (and occasionally bitterest) works of Paul Muldoon- the book may be read cover to cover, digested fully three or four times in a day withuout any diminishment of hunger. From the sublime visions of childhood, to the subtle ironies and perplexities of adulthood, Paul Muldoon has taken the raw matter of his memory and crafted it into a work of art bound to hold relevance in anyone's life.

Though the author celerbrates his distinctly irish roots, his poetry will appeal to persons of all different backgrounds- Paul Muldoon has captured here universal chords of humanity. No one has ever been where Paul Muldoon has traversed, but everyone has experienced it and will easily recognize the fundamental currents behind his work. Paul Muldoon is both a poet's poet and a poet of great appeal to the general audience, I feel I may safely reccomend this book to everyone.

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???

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!

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.

The world premiere of Bandanna at the University of Texas Opera Theatre (Robert DeSimone, Diretor) combined the music of Daron Aric Hagen and words of Paul Muldoon into a two-act opera that reveals the "basic tension between characters who can accept that love is earned or is temporary, and those who demand that love be absolute." The music was wonderful, the scoring/orchestration magnificent. The performance a pleasure. The topic relevent. I hope this text stimulates further performances of the opera.

Here's a Muldoon pastiche:

Basement

Then to spy
in an unused cellar spot

Under a bulb fixture
long since jury-rigged
in deal cast-off

And between oil tank
and salt-scalloped stone wall

--Between a ruck
and a carapace--

A tiny skeleton--mouse.

My instinct:
to trip-tipsy the dark

--As even the Dean
and Cuchulain might--

fantastic.

[My opinion is that Muldoon peaked in 1990 with his tour de force, MADOC--A Mystery, the book-length poem and astounding work of the imagination. MADOC was large, confounding, mysterious, lyrical, and sui generis (really). Yet many readers/reviewers did not appreciate it. Since that work, Muldoon seemingly has tried to obtain such appreciation by offering more manageable fare--featuring topical themes, easy wit, sentiment, form, and rhyme (not to mention all those pretty names of Irish places). He has served up plates of warm apercus. If that is your thing--fine. He is terribly accomplished--his more recent poems, including those of Moy Sand and Gravel, sparkle with polish and panache. But I will take the polar edge of the creative MADOC thankyouverymuch.]

These poems are filled with obscene language and non-sensical usages of words. I read this for a school report, and was disgusted at Mulddoon's lack of talent.

This is not Muldoon's most accessible book, but it would be a shame to mistake the surface complexity for obscurity, or to assume that nothing worthwhile lurks beneath. In fact the book is deep, beautiful and profound -- and, of course, because it is Muldoon, funny as h-e-double-hockeysticks. "The Soap Pig" is as moving as anything Muldoon has written (at least until "Incantata" in *The Annals of Chile*), and several poems, including "Something Else," "The Mist-Net," and the excellent title poem are showcases for the poet's inimitable wit. As for those who have trouble locating the "point" of Muldoon's work, they should check out the poem called "The Point" in his new collection, *Hay*. Like his other work, it may leave them scratching their heads, but hey, if you've got an itch . . .

An odd little book, this is more of a journal in verse than a collection of independent poems. It was published at about the same time that Farrar, Straus and Giroux published Muldoon's THE ANNALS OF CHILE, and the style here is quite similar to that book's long poem "Yarrow." Like "Yarrow," this sequence is highly allusive and makes plenty of inside personal jokes as well; you don't so much hope to understand it as just go along for the ride. What mitigates the opacity somewhat is Muldoon's playful approach to form: the entries often fall into sonnets, and there's always some kind of rhyme scheme to trace. Muldoon's trademark playful pararhyming is very much on display here, as when he criticizes an Irish production for making Chekhov "more Irish / than a rush." Anyone who already enjoys Muldoon should read this, but it certainly shouldn't be the first thing you read by him.