Paul Muldoon's New Selected Poems Reviewed at the New York Times

Would you like a second helping of Muldoon? You got it. Up at the New York Times, Dwight Garner reviews Paul Muldoon's Selected Poems 1968-2014. Garner begins by first taking a dive into his favorite of Muldoon verses, "The Old Country” (Hey, that one's in our archive!) Like the meandering and ever-surpassing catalog in "The Old Country," Garner notes Muldoon's sizable and expanding library of work:

“The Old Country” appears in “Selected Poems 1968-2014,” Mr. Muldoon’s third “best of” volume. His first selected poems appeared in 1986 and his second a decade later. His anvil-size and up-to-then complete “Poems 1968-1998” was published in 2001. You’re not a writer, James Baldwin said, until you have a shelf. Mr. Muldoon requires a shelf for his re-boxings.

This new volume includes five poems from each of his previous 12 books of poems, beginning with “New Weather” (1973) and ending with “One Thousand Things Worth Knowing” (2014). It’s a compact, powerful book, filled with catharses you didn’t know you needed.

Early in his career, Mr. Muldoon’s work sometimes followed in the footsteps of his mentor, the Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet Seamus Heaney. But it followed with madcap energy, like a dog newly let off its leash. Like that dog, it is arguable that Mr. Muldoon has raced past his master.

His work has always leaned on folklore, superstitions and old wives’ tales. He makes these feel modern. He takes traditional verse forms — sonnets, sestinas, ballads, pantoums — and retools them, as if they were engine parts, for his own purposes as well.

Emily Dickinson said, “I am out with lanterns, looking for myself.” Mr. Muldoon’s poems often feature killings or carjackings or missing persons; the police and detectives are frequently in attendance. He is out with lanterns, looking for the body.

Wander on with Garner as your guide at the New York Times.