Muldoon's wisecrack is actually (in the poem) attributed to its deceased
addressee. It is not clear that he endorses any of her often violent and
extravagantly expressed views. Much of what is disparaged as Muldoon's
'cleverness' seems to me to arise from an unselfconsciously obsessed and
hypersensitive involvement with words at the micro level of the letters
& sounds that are in them; and a sense that their transformations one
into another reflect the chemical connections of the material world and
the instability of perception & emotion. But I'm a fan.
e
One
>>thing that annoyed me in reading Muldoon's "Incantata" was what I take
is a
>>jab at Kinsella--"that Dublin thing, that an artist must walk down
Baggott
>>/ Street wearing a hair-shirt under the shirt of Nessus."
>
>Muldoon's wisecrack says a damn sight more about him than about
Kinsella.
>That snug pleasure in his own cleverness gets up my nose to such an
>extent that I've never been able to tolerate the poetry, even in small
>doses. Factor it out, and there's precious little left, it seems to me.
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