By THIRSTY
Paul Muldoon won the Pulitzer Prize
for his collection of poems entitled Moy
Sand and Gravel. His latest collection of poems is a retrospective of his
work entitled Selected Poems 1968-2014.
Stay Thirsty Magazine was honored to
visit with him in Manhattan for this Conversation.
STAY THIRSTY: In your most recent collection of poetry, entitled Selected Poems 1968-2014, you have
chosen 60 poems that you wrote over a 46-year period. This collection is
divided into twelve sections, each one drawn from twelve of your previously
published collections, and you have included five poems from each of those
respective collections. How did you arrive at such a particular and specific
formula? Why did you choose to limit each section to only five poems?
PAUL MULDOON: I knew I wanted this to be a short, manageable book.
And I wanted it to be as good as I could possibly make it. I decided that if I
stuck to five poems per published collection, I might manage that. But very few
poets, even rather famous ones, have actually written 60 decent poems. So I’m
being a little
presumptuous, I expect. Still, my impulse is not to bore.
 |
| Paul Muldoon |
STAY THIRSTY: In at least ten poems in your collection, animals,
ranging from the hedgehog to mules, from a frog to a fox, from a panther to
turkey buzzards, to name just a few, play an important role. What is it that
draws you to write poems that center around animals? What in your life
influenced you to be so sensitive to them?
PAUL MULDOON: I really don’t know. I don’t consciously set out to
write about animals. But I edited and anthology a few years back, The Faber Book of Beasts, that collects
animal poems and, I have to say, they coincidentally include some of the best
poems in English. I think animals make us rise to the occasion, as it were.
They force us to look hard at ourselves even as they force us to look hard at
them.
STAY THIRSTY: Do you write poetry for yourself, for the reader or
for the ages?
PAUL MULDOON: The idea of writing for the ages always made me
slightly uncomfortable. It’s thrown into even greater relief by the fact that
the ages, which had seemed to extend for as long as we weren’t consumed by the
sun, have somehow become a little abbreviated. The reader as a concept has also
become a little abbreviated. There are fewer and fewer people who know how to
read a poem. So I write for myself.
STAY THIRSTY: You studied Queen’s University under the poet Seamus
Heaney who went on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995 and who passed
away in 2013. What do you think he would say about this collection of your
poetry? Which poems would he especially like and which would he be less interested
in?
PAUL MULDOON: I have no idea. I do know that Seamus was acutely
conscious of how difficult – perhaps impossible – it is for any poet to
function after the age of 30. He’s on record as saying that. So he would
certainly have some sense of the perils of the “long haul” and might be in
interested in trying to assess whether those perils have been overcome. Who
knows what his verdict might be.
STAY THIRSTY: The Times
Literary Supplement said that you are “the most significant
English-language poet born since the Second World War.” How do you feel about
that comment?
PAUL MULDOON: It seems a bit mealy-mouthed.
STAY THIRSTY: In your new collection, which poem most reflects and
reveals the inner Paul Muldoon?
PAUL MULDOON: I’d say that each of them reveals something about my
multifaceted wonderfulness. All poems are autobiographical, of course, despite
their best efforts. And poets reveal themselves all the time. The poetry
business is not for shrinking violets or people who are worried about how
they’re going to be perceived. You simply can’t afford to care about what
people think. All decent poets are renegades. All decent poems have a somewhat
outrageous aspect.
STAY THIRSTY: How have your views on poetry evolved over the past
fifty years? How has your skill as a poet changed during that time?
PAUL MULDOON: It’s hard to know. As a teacher, I have to believe I
might have learned something. But nothing prepares one quite for writing the
next poem. At least not the poem I’d want to write. I’m not interested in
writing Paul Muldoon poems. From what I can see, there are already a few people
doing just that. I want to do something unexpected each time out.
STAY THIRSTY: You have said that, “Poetry is a way of making sense
of the world.” How does poetry help explain the turbulent times of today?
PAUL MULDOON: Poetry helps us understand our problems. It doesn’t
necessarily help us to solve them. To solve a problem like climate change, for
example, one would need to have someone other that Pruitt at the helm of the
EPA.
STAY THIRSTY: If you assigned Selected
Poems 1968-2014 to one of your creative writing classes at Princeton, what
would you say about the poet Paul Muldoon? How would you characterize his work
in the English literary canon?
STAY THIRSTY: What two key pieces of advice can you offer for those
who aspire to become well-respected and successful poets?
PAUL MULDOON: 1) You must aspire to knowing everything. 2) You must
aspire to knowing nothing.
(Paul Muldoon header photo: Courtesy of Princeton University)
(Paul Muldoon photo credit: Adrian Cook)
(Paul Muldoon photo credit: Adrian Cook)
Link: