Hay (Faber poetry) (Paperback)

Customers buy this book with The Man with Night Sweats by Thom Gunn

+

Price For Both: £16.98

One of these items ships sooner than the other. Show details

• This item: Hay (Faber poetry) by Paul Muldoon

  Usually dispatched within 10 to 14 days.
  Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk.
  This item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
  

• The Man with Night Sweats by Thom Gunn

  In stock.
  Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk.
  This item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
  

The Man with Night Sweats by Thom Gunn 3.7 out of 5 stars (3)  £8.99

Poetry in Theory: An Anthology 1900-2000 (Blackwell Anthologies) by Jon Cook £23.74

Finders Keepers: Selected Prose 1971-2001 by Seamus Heaney £11.89

Letters Between a Father and Son by V.S. Naipaul 4.5 out of 5 stars (2)  £6.99

Family Sayings by Natalia Ginzburg

› Explore similar items

Amazon.co.uk Review
Though Paul Muldoon's voice is thoroughly his own, a taste for turbulent rhythms and fantastical journeys firmly links him with some of our finest poets, most notably Samuel Coleridge. In "The Mud Room", the start of this stunning collection, the speaker juxtaposes wildly dissimilar images--Pharaohs and Kikkoman soy sauce, Virgil's Georgics and "cardboard boxes from K-Mart", ziggurats and six-packs. Why? Because in piecing together the whole of our collective human past--the past of Jackson Brown's "The Pretender" and the past of Epicurus--Muldoon casts a vote for inclusion, a vote against exclusivity and relegation. He travels far to show such close relations. Rather than focus on differences, we're forced to consider a resemblance between rock stars and Pharaohs, and in turn a grander likeness that joins us all.

But in drawing together common connective strands of history, culture and emotion, Muldoon is anything but general. His language is highly original and searching. He doesn't merely sniff dispassionately at the "otherness" of words; like an excited hound that has discovered the scent of another animal, he rolls vigorously in it--and makes it his own:

So a harum-scarum
bushman, hey, would slash one forearm
with a flint, ho, or a sliver of steel
till it flashed, hey ho, like a hel-
iograph.

These poems resonate with an easy coexistence of the ordinary and exotic. Whether penning rhymed haiku (rhymed haiku?) about placid farm life ("None more dishevelled / than those who seemed most demure. / Our rag-weed revels"), or a pantoum about Cracow ("Into the Vistula swollen with rain / you and I might have plunged and found a way / to beat out the black grain / as our forefathers did on threshing day"), Muldoon's words gleam like jewels unearthed from everyday mud. --Martha Silano --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review
No poet creates such intricately structured verse as Muldoon, whose most recent collection performs amazing tricks ('hey!') of intellectual virtuosity - half-rhymes extended to outrageous limits, parallels between different poems, interwoven strands of subject matter - while at the same time somehow remaining fresh and appealing. We never quite understand his gist, but we are hypnotized by the performance, and moved again and again by strangely haunting details. Start with his wonderful poem 'Long Finish', a compex hymn to marriage - what might be called, in both sense of the phrase, a labour of love. (Kirkus UK)

The Irish-born Princeton professor dazzles the ear with his eighth book of verse; full of inventive rhyme and repetitions, and seamless meters, Muldoon's work resembles the monk of his poem "Anonymous": "sharp-witted, swift, and sure." A linguistic voluptuary, Muldoon sometimes leaves readers behind with his gestures to Apollinaire, and his dense Joycean patter; but his best poems ground his visionary sensibility in everyday observation: "The Mudroom" and two poems titled "The Bangle," in particular, rely on a collage of imagery and idiom, from Yiddish slang, Asian clarity, and classical allusion to the common items found in a mudroom (hubcap, extra fridge, soft drinks). Muldoon's playful wit supports one virtuoso piece after another: a bit on the famous Siamese twins, Chang and Eng ("Lag"); a mess of fractured aphorisms and proverbs ("Symposium"), and a versified errata sheet. Less successful are his calligrammes (and other visual jokes), as well as a long sequence inspired by rock records - a forced set of personal liner notes recounting memories associated with particular albums. The ninety rhymed haiku of "Hopewell Haiku" are wonderfully anecdotal and properly spare - Muldoon holds his expansive humor in check. Throughout here, he plays on his name and returns to the simple image of his title: the one thing he knows with certainty. When he eschews cleverness for its own sake, Muldoon enlists his considerable technical skill in undermining his own conceits: he's clearly a major young poet in any case. (Kirkus Reviews)

See all Product Description

There are no customer reviews yet.   Create your own review
Video reviews New feature! Amazon now allows customers to upload product video reviews. Use a webcam or video camera to record and upload reviews to Amazon.	Ad feedback

Great Books I Own: A list by "djmaughan"   my favourite true crime/stories: A list by callmeoldfashioned   Istanbul & Turkey - a foreign visitor's gentle obsession: A list by Mark Meynell "quaesitor" Create a Listmania! list

Search Listmania!

• Books > Poetry, Drama & Criticism > Poetry > By Period > 20th Century

• Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
• I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
• I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.