E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

FOR ST PATRICK'S DAY, EYEWEAR IS VERY GLAD TO REPRISE THIS BLOG POST ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED MAY 15 2011. Eyewear is delighted to feature Paul Muldoon .  Muldoon (pictured here as a young man) is, in my opinion, the most significant poet from Ireland and Britain born since 1950.  This is his 60th year.  His style - witty, linguistically complex, musical, allusive, and filled with puns - is the most rhythmically original since Lowell' s and Auden 's.  He is the funniest Irish writer of genius since Flann O'Brien ; and the most alert to language's depths since Heaney and Joyce . He has developed a way of patterning words and images by alluding to myth, legend, and also personal experience, employing a syntax that is playful and sometimes mesmeric.  He might be the most verbally seductive of poets since Swinburne .  His influence is apparent on a whole generation of poets, and the work of, say, Don Paterson , is unimaginable without the Muldoon template ...

The greatest living poet in the English language born since 1940, Paul Muldoon , turns 61 today.  Happy Muldoonday!

Todd Swift reviews in verse Maggot by Paul Muldoon Toggam Seeing as pastiche Is just spray-painting a pebble to put on a beach so that Homage to Paul Klee ends up clobbering Cassius Clay before he altered his moniker to Mohammed Which is a bit like moving the mountain To Moy or a mole hill; or saying a fountain Can’t give youth because it is Floridian, when it can – Because Obama made miracles happen; Or like being Irish in Japan, or a GI in Kyoto, Mr Moto in a Honda Civic, Privy to a music that makes critics swoon, As if life on Mars was no microbial squirt But gravel from the sod that Patrick flung when sick And tired of local squabbles – In short, if copying a king-cat lays up big baubles In the court of St James (or is that St Paul?) – Then plagiarism is what comes before the pride That tips off that Satanic fall, that bedevilled Milton, Who also had his blind side and his traditions And the way he copied Tasso to go for baroque, Which is a sort of jewel-encrusted squa...