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The Poetry of Paul Muldoon
Author(s): Jefferson Holdridge (Author)
- Publisher: The Liffey Press
- Publication Date: 1 May 2008
- Language: English
- Print length: 220 pages
- ISBN-10: 9781905785308
- ISBN-13: 1905785305
Book Description
“The Poetry of Paul Muldoon” introduces the general reader to some of the main critical discussions surrounding Muldoon’s work. One of the main questions burning from his poetry is that of art’s complicity in suffering. Answering this political question creates some of Muldoon’s best poems because, as this critical work illustrates, they are so deeply self-indicting. If sometimes Muldoon insists that art has a positive role to play, at other times he states that it is of no use whatsoever, and merely feeds off the carnage. This book shows how, for this Pulitzer Prize winner, art should not merely repeat the devastation of the world – although he is afraid that it does, and engages in bitter moral despair that makes his poems 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.
Editorial Reviews
Review
“[Holdridge’s] talent for insight and exposition is perfectly suited to the particular challenges that Paul Muldoon – both a patently intellectual and extravagantly playful poet – presents to readers…. an important and significant work, attractive to individual readers, widely used in college courses, and inevitably cited in the growing body of scholarship devoted to this distinctive poet.” – Philip Kuberski, Professor of English, Wake Forest University”
About the Author
Dr Jefferson Holdridge is Associate Professor of English at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, and Director of the Wake Forest University Press.
