A welcome language refresher
Irish poet Paul Muldoon’s work helping rejuvenate English prose
Perhaps hoping for a bit of encouragement, a little-known Irish poet named Paul Muldoon sent a batch of his poems to Seamus Heaney. At the time, Heaney (1939-2013) was the leading poet in Ireland, on his way to the 1995 Nobel Prize. Muldoon asked what he could do to improve his work. Heaney replied with the crispest and most cheering note a young aspirant could hope for. He wrote: “Nothing.”
The story is often told about the two of them. Muldoon had acquired both a friend and mentor in Heaney. In his office, he hangs a handwritten poem Heaney addressed to Muldoon and a photo of them together. But it’s a long time since Muldoon needed the encouragement.
In 1973, Faber and Faber published his first book, New Weather, while he was still an undergraduate at Queen’s University in Belfast.
He is set to receive Queen Elizabeth’s Gold Medal for Poetry, joining a distinguished list that includes W.H. Auden, John Betjeman, Philip Larkin, Robert Graves and Stephen Spender.
His three dozen or so books of poetry have been much honoured. He’s won the Pulitzer Prize in the U.S. and the Griffin Prize in Canada. He has a T.S. Eliot Prize and has held the post of Oxford Professor of Poetry. Since 1987, he’s been a humanities professor at Princeton University and the poetry editor of The New Yorker.
His awareness of U.S. culture shows up often in his work.
Muldoon baffles some readers with archaic words, or maybe words he invents. He likes wonky meter and odd terms based in popular culture (Irish or American). Perhaps these things make him less popular than he deserves, or perhaps the diversity of his writing tends to overwhelm his poetry. He’s written four libretti for operas by Daron Hagen. He’s written lyrics for a rock band called The Handsome Family. Another band, Wayside Shrines, has recorded 13 of the lyrics in a Muldoon book called Word on the Street. His current group is Rogue Oliphant.
Through it all, Muldoon is one of those Irish writers who appears every generation or so to refresh the English language. Seamus Heaney had it right. Paul Muldoon is both Irish and original.