Paul Muldoon and the Language of Poetry

Paul Muldoon and the Language of Poetry <UN> Costerus New Series Editors C.C. Barfoot (Leiden University) Michael Boyden (Uppsala University) Theo D’haen (Leuven University, and Leuven University) Raphaël Ingelbien (Leuven University) Birgit Neumann (Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf) volume 228 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/cos <UN> Paul Muldoon and the Language of Poetry By Ruben Moi leiden | boston <UN> This is an open access title distributed under the terms of the CC-BY-NC 4.0 License, which permits any non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited. Cover illustration: Letter Composition (2013) from “LETTERS OF INTENT” (https://staringpoetics.weebly .com) [Digital media] by Nico Vassilakis. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Moi, Ruben, author. Title: Paul Muldoon and the language of poetry / by Ruben Moi. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill Rodopi, [2020] | Series: Costerus new series, 0165–9618 ; vol. 228 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019043272 (print) | LCCN 2019043273 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004355101 (hardback) | ISBN 9789004355118 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Muldoon, Paul--Criticism and interpretation. | Muldoon, Paul--Literary style. Classification: LCC PR6063.U367 Z83 2020 (print) | LCC PR6063.U367 (ebook) | DDC 821/.914--dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2019043272 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019043273 Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 0165-9618 ISBN 978-90-04-35510-1 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-35511-8 (e-book) Copyright 2020 by Ruben Moi. Published by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. Koninklijke Brill NV reserves the right to protect the publication against unauthorized use and to authorize dissemination by means of offprints, legitimate photocopies, microform editions, reprints, translations, and secondary information sources, such as abstracting and indexing services including databases. Requests for commercial re-use, use of parts of the publication, and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner. <UN> Contents Acknowledgements VII Abbreviations IX Introduction 1 1 New Weather 19 2 Mules 40 3 Why Brownlee Left 68 4 Quoof 102 5 Meeting the British 136 6 Madoc 165 7 The Annals of Chile 189 8 Hay 233 9 Moy Sand and Gravel 270 10 Horse Latitudes 302 11 Maggot 328 12 One Thousand Things Worth Knowing 358 Conclusion 388 Bibliography 395 Index of Modern Authors 416 Index of Subjects 418 <UN> Acknowledgements As Paul Muldoon’s lifelong poetic project moves onwards, a few words of appreciation are due to academic colleagues, friends, family and creative people – frequently the same persons – who have inspired these lines during departmental symposia, seminars and conferences. Professor Charles Ivan Armstrong at the University of Agder, Norway, has provided invaluable cere- bral companionship and honorable friendship over several years. Ample grati- tude is due to Professor Stuart Sillars, Shakespeare scholar and professor emeritus from the University of Bergen, Norway, for productive suggestions and sound advice over almost the same span of time. Heartfelt appreciation is also due to my fellow colleagues at the same university, Professors of film studies and American literature, Asbjørn Grønstad and Lene Johannessen. The company of these friends has been sustaining spiritually and scholarly on a personal and professional level. Other colleagues in the field of contemporary Irish poetry have become solid friends. Professor Ben Keatinge has been invaluable for the completion of this book with his advice, humour and companionship. Professor Anne Karhio at the National University of Ireland, Galway, has provided articles, books and scholarly exchange for years. She also facili- tated a very successful stay at the Moore Institute for Research in the Humani- ties and Social Studies at the NUI, Galway, which provided a haven for finishing the book. Along the way, I have been fortunate to benefit from a year’s research visit at the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University, Belfast, and from feedback and critical encouragement from such seniors in the field as Edna and Michael Longley, and the long list of staff and students at this intellectual and stimulating centre for contemporary poetry and writing. Publications, conferences and seminars with the international Border Aesthetics research group, conducted with such academic alacrity and social grace by Professors Stephen Wolfe and Johan Schimanski at UiT The Arctic University of Norway, have added ideas and motivation as well as fostering appropriate debate. As- sociate Professor Tim Saunders has been a source of intellectual inspiration and social comradeship inside, outside and in between the border group. UiT The Arctic University of Norway, the Norwegian Research Council and Am- basáid na hÉireann, The Irish Embassy in Oslo, have generously supported my research. Appreciation is also due, naturally, to Paul Muldoon himself for all his poetry, critical writing and public performances, and to all the scholars in the field, whose incisive insights provide corroboration and counterpoints for my own specific approach to Muldoon’s poetry. More supportive and steadfast than any, Line Leonore Haugan Moi, my wife, has extended her interests and <UN> viii Acknowledgements unflagging support to my project and well-being. I would like to thank her for her love, compassion and care, and for her generosity in all respects, not least with our time. Needless to say, almost: the responsibility for the form and contents of this book rests entirely upon my own shoulders. Ruben Moi <UN> Abbreviations The following abbreviations of Muldoon’s publications are employed in the main text and footnotes. The books are published by Faber and Faber in London. Many of the same books are also published by Farrar, Strauss and Giroux in New York. Muldoon has also published poetry volumes, plays and children’s books with Wake Forest University Press in the United States and Gallery Press in Ireland. NW New Weather, 1973 M Mules, 1977 WBL Why Brownlee Left, 1980 Q Quoof, 1983 MTB Meeting the British, 1987 Mad Madoc, 1990 AC The Annals of Chile, 1994 H Hay, 1998 TII To Ireland, I, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000 MSG Moy Sand and Gravel, 2002 HL Horse Latitudes, 2006 Mag Maggot, 2010 OTTWK One Thousand Things Worth Knowing, 2015 <UN> Introduction ‘Quaat?’ asks Derek Mahon appositely in his review of Quoof, Muldoon’s out- landish fourth volume of poetry from 1983, and captures the uncanny side of the linguistic universe of Muldoon’s poetry.1 This Muldonic oddity intimates in its linguistic unintelligibility and semantic incomprehension the impor- tance of language to his poetry, and some of the reasons why this topic invites in-depth analysis.2 To single out language as sole concern of a critical exposi- tion makes perfect sense with a poet who churns out words such as ‘quoof,’ ‘wannigan,’ and ‘retinagraph’ (Mad, 18); who ‘cannot but, can’t but hear a ‘cunt’ in the ‘silken tent’ in Frost’s ‘The Silken Tent’; who rhymes ‘dear Sis’ with ‘metastasis’ (HL, 94); who draws idioms from multiple languages and calls Yeats ‘Il Duce of Drumcliffe’ (AC, 145); who writes a poem on testicles, ‘Balls’ (Mag, 81) and who invents the following sentence in a poem on Wittgenstein (or is it Coleridge?): ‘Now you stumparumper is a connoisorrow who has lost his raspectabilberry’ (Mad, 219).3 Furthermore, he writes a three-word poem entitled ‘[Kristeva]’ (Mad, 260) on the famous post-structuralist feminist and he reviews Patricia Craig’s The Rattle of the North as influenced by the ‘recent attempt to establish a post-Barthes, or “Londonderridean” canon of Irish “writing.”’4 Muldoon’s poetic language excels in Joycean lexicographic experi- mentalism, Yeatsian stanzaic solidity and Eliotic auditory imagination, and bears the hallmarks of recent language philosophy. In doing so, he not only 1 Derek Mahon, ‘Quaat?’ New Statesman (11 May 1983), 27–8. 2 Muldonic, Muldoonic, Muldoonesque and Muldoonish appear as precise adjectives to articu- late hallmarks of Muldoon’s poetry. Muldoon expresses disaffection with Muldoonian as a congealed concept, a cliché and a manifestation/reflection of the self-mannerism and the self-parody that he works hard to avoid. Patrick McGuinness, ‘Interview with Paul Muldoon,’ Irish Studies Review 17, no. 1 (2009), 103. Muldonic echoes sardonic, macaronic and all the phonics that his poetry frequently employs. Anthony Johnson defines this adjective as ‘per- taining to dry, incisive and yet understated humour; expressing a quality of slant sharpness,’ and his sprite reading of Muldoon’s ekphrastic poem ‘Sandro Botticelli: The Adoration of the Magi’ enacts many associations of the adjective. ‘The Adoration of the Maggot,’ in The Cross- ings of Art in Ireland, ed. Ruben Moi, Charles Ivan Armstrong, and Brynhildur Boyce (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2014), 261–281. Muldoonesque and Muldoonish offer connotations of different kinds. New terms for utter reduction into one word of Muldoon’s comprehensive and versa- tile poetry

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