Poems 1968-1998

“Ireland”
The Volkswagen parked in the gap,
But gently ticking over.
You wonder if it’s lovers
And not men hurrying back
Across two fields and a river.

Sven Birkerts has said, “It is not usual for a poet of Muldoon’s years to have . . . an oeuvre disclosing significant shifts and evolutions. But Muldoon, more than most, is an artist in high flight from self-repetition and the deadening business of living up to created expectations.” The body of work in Poems 1968-1998 — a comprehensive gathering of Paul Muldoon’s eight volumes — finds a great poet reinventing himself at every turn. Muldoon’s career thus far shows us a fascinatingly mutable climate in which each freshening period brings — as his first collection was predictively titled — new weather.”