The End of the Poem

"In The End of the Poem, a collection of fifteen lectures delivered during his term from 1999 to 2004 as Oxford Professor of Poverty . . . the reader gets to look over the shoulder of a prominent poet as he reads the works of other writers in order to illuminate the phrase 'the end of the poem' . . . Over the past thirty years, Paul Muldoon has established himself as a poet—perhaps the poet—of blurry borders and quick shifts of discourse. He has himself suggested that this interest in exploring boundaries relates to his personal history—as a poet raised Catholic in Northern Ireland, who has lives in America since 1987—and his output of genre-bending texts plays out such issues of identity by keeping a plenitude of possible meanings in the air at once . . . The lectures do what they set out to do. Readers familiar with the source poems he handles will undoubtedly see in Muldoon's freewheeling flybys the glint of a new facet never before considered, while new readers will encounter them both as original works and teaching texts for his poetic theories. Even those most resistant to his methods cannot help but reflect on how they relate to his topic of the 'ends' of poetry . . . As a window into the beliefs and practices of one of the most influential poets of the day, this collection is invaluable."—Wayne Kobylinski, West Chester University

"His lectures, delivered with an intimate command of literary history and of individual texts, are nothing if not fascinating."—Sam Munson, The New York Sun

“One of the most impressive books of practical criticism and poetic intelligence I have read in years. It is entertaining, informative, brilliant, distinctive, yet accessible for the common reader . . . Massive intelligence [is] everywhere evident. The book is exemplary, too, in that it is deeply learned and completely unpedantic—no air of the schoolroom about it, just vital, astonishing engagement. If you like hearing someone talk passionately and astutely about something in which he’s an expert, you will like this book . . . His tone is extremely conversable, his style and exposition lucid, and his manner of reading remarkable—idiosyncratic but never less than brilliant. The End of the Poem is the perfect point of entry into Muldoonland; a more companionable and illuminating guide could not be imagined.”—Maureen N. McLane, Chicago Tribune

“Muldoon entertains almost as much as he enlightens, an unusual and refreshing approach . . . Not many books of literary criticism make you laugh.”—The Economist

"[Muldoon's] scholarship is excellent . . . more important, [The End of the Poem] is interesting and easily accessible as well."—Paolina Taglienti, Library Journal

"In his most substantial prose collection to date, Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Muldoon offers 15 characteristically idiosyncratic lectures on individual poems by a host of influential world poets, delivered at Oxford University from 1999 to 2004. Rather than explication and clarification, Muldoon favors association and surprise, as he does in his poems. In discussions of often lesser-known poems by major figures, beginning with W.B. Yeats and moving through Emily Dickinson, Ted Hughes, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, Fernando Pessoa and Irish-born Muldoon's own mentor, Seamus Heaney, Muldoon focuses on the recurrence and etymology of particular words as they relate to other poems and poets, quoting the OED almost as often as poetry. He also locates the poems' origins in other unlikely texts, such as a little-known 1851 Harper's article, which Muldoon claims influenced Dickinson . . . Muldoon's conjectures . . . are always highly compelling and clever, and this book provides an expansive view of the mind of a major poet, and a fresh, if unorthodox, method for reading literary texts."—Publishers Weekly