ELMER KENNEDY-ANDREWS (ed.) Paul Muldoon. Poetry, Prose, Drama: A Collection of Essays.

Abstract

TRICKSTERS and shape-shifters have long featured in the work of Paul Muldoon, which has itself seemed to mirror their very transformations. This collection of essays, arising out of a symposium in 2000, attempts to capture as many sides of the poet as it can. The volume consists of twelve essays and an interview, conducted by Neil Corcoran, taking in Muldoon's poetry, drama, and critical prose. But since the beginning of the decade the poet has offered several more versions of himself. In particular, 2006 was a bumper year, with Muldoon appearing as Oxford Professor of Poetry in the lectures in The End of the Poem, in rock star mode in the volume of song lyrics entitled General Admission, and as an American poet in Horse Latitudes (at least as far as the spelling goes). These publications pose significant new challenges to Muldoon's critics, which makes this snapshot of scholarly work before the flood, as it were, all the more intriguing.