Hay : Poems

Rating:
Summary: Great book. Absolutely wonderful. Buy it.
Review: Great book. Absolutely wonderful. Buy it.

(I had written a longer, more interesting review, but it was apparently lost on the web.)

Rating:
Summary: Delightful
Review: I enjoyed the opportunity of hearing a reading by Paul Muldoon last spring and this semester I'm taking a writing of poetry class. I had to do a presentation on a living poet and I picked up one of his latest collections and it's like the title of this review, delightful. There are so many different styles of eccentric poems in this one collection and some that contain such obscure literary references that it invokes a sense of bewilderment and leads to a trail of website-hunting to figure out what he's talking about. But it's okay, because many of the poems can be enjoyed at face value, but if you want to dig deeper you can. He's one dang clever guy and this collection is definitely enjoyable.

Rating:
Summary: Mr. Muldoon's Neighborhood
Review: Is it possible for one person to be the best American poet and the best Irish poet at the same time? Muldoon certainly lays a strong claim to both titles: his Irishness lends him a musicality far superior to that achieved by most contemporary Americans, while his American side is the source of a far-ranging brashness, an ambition, scope and post- modern adventurousness that makes many Irish poets look rather, well, staid. "Hay" is a brave and experimental volume, more Byronic than ironic (though there's plenty of both) that takes place in a mostly domestic setting. As Muldoon wanders around his house and neighborhood and reports on what passes before his eyes and through his mind, the reader is treated to a wild and ceaseless cinematic display that is at times violent, at times kooky, not infrequently nostalgic, and often reminiscent of of Borges, Rilke, or Berryman (not to mention Kurosawa, Kubrick, and Scorsese.) "Long Finish" probably is the most moving piece here, one of the best love poems of the last ten or twenty years, while "The Bangle, Slight Return" is is an intriguing crossword slash jigsaw puzzle that promises boundless entertainment and befuddlement. This book should be sold in airports, distributed free to hotel rooms . . . it's groovy, baby!