Paul Muldoon: Critical Essays (Liverpool University Press - Liverpool English Texts & Studies) (Volume 41)

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. 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 which Paul Muldoon's work has made both compelling and fruitful. 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