The title of Horse Latitudes , Paul Muldoon's tenth collection of poetry, refers to those areas thirty degrees north and south of the equator where sailing ships tend to be becalmed, where stasis (if not stagnation) is the order of the day. From Bosworth Field to Beijing, the Boyne to Bull Run, from a series of text messages to the nineteenth-century Irish poet Thomas Moore to an elegy for Warren Zevon, and from post-Agreement Ireland to George W...
(sung to the tune of "I Shall Be Free No. 10") I was thinkin' about Dylan and Paul Muldoon. One writes poems; the other writes tunes. One's an academic of the third degree; The other's got an honorary Ph.D. They've both been to Princeton and to Oxford Town; They think about somethin' and they write it all down. They both distill the essence in a coupla words As subtle and compelling as diminished thirds. I wish them both a...
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I felt that this book exceeds Moy Sand and Grave in quality. It evokes some of the mystery of Muldoon's previous work. Many of his poems are densely inscrutable, yet somehow utterly compelling. One often gets the impression that he may be obliquely referencing things beyond what is immediately offered in the writing. ...but I am not much of a scholar: is there a skeleton key?
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