My heart is heavy. For I saw Fionnuala,
"The Gem of the Roe," "The Flower of Sweet Strabane,"
when a girl reached down into a freezer bin
to bring up my double scoop of vanilla.
-"White Shoulders"
Seamus Heaney has called his colleague Paul Muldoon "one of the era's true originals." While Muldoon's previous book, The Annals of Chile, was poetry at an extreme of wordplay and formal complexity, Hay is made up of shorter, clearer lyric poems, retaining all of Muldoon's characteristic combination of wit and profundity but appealing to the reader in new and delightful ways. His eighth book, it is also his most inviting-full of joy in language, fascination with popular culture, and enthusiasm for the writing of poetry itself. This is the first of his books to really capture the effect of America on his poetic sensibility, which is like a magnet for impressions and the miscellany of the culture.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
But in drawing together common connective strands of history, culture, and emotion, Muldoon is anything but general. His language is highly original and searching. He doesn't merely sniff dispassionately at the "otherness" of words; like an excited hound that has discovered the scent of another animal, he rolls vigorously in it--and makes it his own:
So a harum-scarum
bushman, hey, would slash one forearm
with a flint, ho, or a sliver of steel
till it flashed, hey ho, like a hel-
iograph.
These poems resonate with an easy coexistence of the ordinary and the exotic. Whether he's penning rhymed haiku (rhymed haiku?) about placid farm life ("None more dishevelled / than those who seemed most demure. / Our rag-weed revels") or quatrains about Cracow ("Into the Vistula swollen with rain / you and I might have plunged and found a way / to beat out the black grain / as our forefathers did on threshing day"), Muldoon's words gleam like jewels unearthed from everyday mud. --Martha Silano
Paul Muldoon, born in Northern Ireland in 1951, lives with his wife, Jean Hanff Korelitz, and their daughter in New Jersey, where he chairs the creative writing program at Princeton University.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
Shipping:
US$ 2.64
Within U.S.A.
Book Description Condition: New. Seller Inventory # 592132-n
Book Description Paperback or Softback. Condition: New. Hay: Poems 0.42. Book. Seller Inventory # BBS-9780374526191
Book Description Condition: New. Seller Inventory # ABLIING23Feb2215580168571
Book Description Condition: New. Seller Inventory # I-9780374526191
Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. Brand New Copy. Seller Inventory # BBB_new0374526192
Book Description PAP. Condition: New. New Book. Shipped from UK. THIS BOOK IS PRINTED ON DEMAND. Established seller since 2000. Seller Inventory # IQ-9780374526191
Book Description Softcover. Condition: New. Special order direct from the distributor. Seller Inventory # ING9780374526191
Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. Buy for Great customer experience. Seller Inventory # GoldenDragon0374526192
Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. New. Seller Inventory # Wizard0374526192
Book Description Paperback / softback. Condition: New. This item is printed on demand. New copy - Usually dispatched within 5-9 working days. Seller Inventory # C9780374526191