Moy Sand and Gravel Poems

Paul Muldoon's ninth collection of poems, his first sinceHay(1998), finds him working a rich vein that extends from the rivery, apple-heavy County Armagh of the 1950s, in which he was brought up, to suburban New Jersey, on the banks of a canal dug by Irish navvies, where he now lives. Grounded, glistening, as gritty as they are graceful, these poems seem capable of taking in almost anything, and anybody, be it a Tuareg glimpsed on the Irish border, Bessie Smith, Marilyn Monroe, Queen Elizabeth I, a hunted hare, William Tell, William Butler Yeats, Sitting Bull, Ted Hughes, an otter, a fox, Mr. and Mrs. Stanley Joscelyne, un unearthed pit pony, a loaf of bread, an outhouse, a killdeer, Oscar Wilde, or a flock of redknots. At the heart of the book is an elegy for a miscarried child, and that elegiac tone predominates, particularly in the elegant remaking of Yeats's "A Prayer for My Daughter" with which the book concludes, where a welter of traffic signs and slogans, along with the spirits of admen, hardware storekeepers, flimflammers, fixers, and other forebears, are borne along by a hurricane-swollen canal, and private grief coincides with some of the gravest matter of our age. Paul Muldoonis the author of eight previous books of poetry. He teaches at Princeton University and is Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford. Winner of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry Co-winner of the 2003 Griffin Poetry Prize From "the most significant English-language poet born since the Second World War" (The Times Literary Supplement) comes a book of verse that extends from the rivery, apple-heavy County Armagh of the 1950s, where Paul Muldoon was brought up, to suburban New Jersey, on the banks of a canal dug by Irish navvies, where he now lives. Grounded, glistening, as gritty as they are graceful, these poems seem capable of taking in almost anything, and anybody, be it a Tuareg glimpsed on the Irish border, Bessie Smith, Marilyn Monroe, Queen Elizabeth I, a hunted hare, William Tell, William Butler Yeats, Sitting Bull, Ted Hughes, an otter, a fox, Mr. and Mrs. Stanley Joscelyne, an unearthed pit pony, a loaf of bread, an outhouse, a killdeer, Oscar Wilde, or a flock of redknots. At the heart ofMoy Sand and Gravelis an elegy for a miscarried child, and that elegiac tone predominates these pages, particularly in the elegant remaking of Yeats's "A Prayer for My Daughter," which concludes the book. In this long and windingand brilliantly associativelast poem, a welter of traffic signs and slogans, along with the spirits of admen, hardware storekeepers, flimflammers, fixers, and other forebears, are borne along by a hurricane-swollen canal, and private grief coincides with some of the gravest matter of our age. Winner of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry Co-winner of the 2003 Griffin Poetry Prize "This first full volume since Muldoon's monumentalPoems 1968-1998reveals one of the English-speaking world's most acclaimed poets still at the top of his slippery, virtuosic game."Publishers Weekly "A marvelous book; nothing human, or inhuman, is alien to it."Andrew Motion,The Independent "[Muldoon is] a postmodernist, ruminating on past knowledge and contemporary demotic culture while relying on the traditional verse furniture: rhyme and unreason . . . He's a riddler, enigmatic, distrustful of appearances, generous in allusion, doubtless a dab hand at crossword puzzles . . . A varied and lavish poet . . . [This] book shimmers with play, the play of mind, the play of recondite information."Peter Davison,The New York Times Book Review "Things happen in Paul Muldoon's poems that don't happen anywhere elseI'd callMoy Sand and Gravelthe Irish version of magic realism . .

Paul Muldoon is the author of eight previous books of poetry, collected in Poems 1968-1998 (FSG, 2001). He teaches at Princeton University and is Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford.