The Poetry of Paul Muldoon

by Holdridge, Jefferson

• ISBN13: 9781905785308
• ISBN10: 1905785305
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-09-15
• Publisher: Liffey Pr

Summary

"The Poetry of Paul Muldoon introduces the student and general reader to the critical discussion surrounding Muldoon's oeuvre, as well as to his major themes. It examines the poet's meditations on culture and nature, human and animal, speculations on the act of perception, figures fragmented by the Troubles, and philosophical considerations of colonisation. It then discusses what rank among the most beautiful and intricate elegies of our time. For Muldoon, art's complicity in suffering is a political, self-indicting question, which his best poems endeavour to answer. If sometimes this Pulitzer Prize winner insists that art has a positive role to play, at other times he fears that it merely feeds off the carnage. This critical book shows how, for Muldoon, art should not merely repeat the devastation of the world - although he is afraid that it does, and engages in bitter moral despair that places his work among the very best any contemporary poet has written. The Poetry of Paul Muldoon unearths difficult questions of form with a metaphysical significance that is suitable to our times."--BOOK JACKET.

Author Biography

Jefferson Holdridge is Associate Professor of English at Wake Forest University and Director of Wake Forest University Press.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
New Weather (1973)	p. 11
Mules (1977)	p. 27
Why Brownlee Left (1980)	p. 43
Quoof (1983)	p. 61
Meeting the British (1987)	p. 81
Madoc: A Mystery (1990)	p. 99
The Annals of Chile (1994)	p. 119
Hay (1998)	p. 137
May Sand and Gravel (2002)	p. 153
Horse Latitudes (2006)	p. 173
Conclusion	p. 193
Bibliography	p. 199
Index	p. 219
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.