Ireland
The Volkswagen parked in the gap,
But gently ticking over.
You wonder if it's lovers
And not men hurrying back
Across two fields and a river.
Sven Birkerts has said, It is not usual for a poet of Muldoon's years to
have . . . an oeuvre disclosing significant shifts and evolutions. But
Muldoon, more than most, is an artist in high flight from
self-repetition and the deadening business of living up to created
expectations. The body of work in Poems 1968-1998 -- a comprehensive
gathering of Paul Muldoon's eight volumes -- finds a great poet
reinventing himself at every turn. Muldoon's career thus far shows us a
fascinatingly mutable climate in which each freshening period brings --
as his first collection was predictively titled -- new weather.